


Rebirth

by Mialienes



Category: Super Junior, Super Junior-M
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Dubious Science, Gen, M/M, Science Fiction, Terraforming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-10 14:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 50,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3294335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mialienes/pseuds/Mialienes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes 150 years and 13 light years for Zhou Mi to find himself, save the human race, and - perhaps - allow himself to love.</p><p>Warnings: minor character death, one passing mention of murder-suicide, mentions of an apocalyptic future</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pergendum

**Author's Note:**

> Another Space AU because there's not enough QMi sci-fi imo. Also because space is awesome. 
> 
> The terraforming ideas in this fic were inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent series: Red Mars / Blue Mars / Green Mars. I highly recommend those books. 
> 
> Please note that this is not a hard science story, even though I have attempted to keep it on the side of science rather than veer into fantasy. However, I'm aware that the science is still dubious at best, and there are many instances where I have definitely taken artistic licence (for example: even though Kapteyn b is real - and at 13 light years away is the closest potentially habitable exoplanet to Earth - with our current technology it would take 100,000+ years to travel there). 
> 
> Please forgive any glaring errors and inconsistencies. I did my best to keep things to theoretically possible, even if improbable, rather than completely impossible. 
> 
> This was written for nanowrimo, the first time I've attempted it. I hope that you enjoy this fic, I thought about nothing else for an entire month (well, this and Mi's solo, which was released then).

There was only darkness. Black, cold, icy darkness.

"Hello? Can you hear me?"

Zhou Mi was drifting, floating in a frozen ocean, its surface so thick with ice that no light could penetrate it. But there was sound - just a hint of a whisper. 

"Hello?" 

Zhou Mi pressed himself against the ice, feeling the vibrations against his cheek as someone tapped on the surface above him. 

"Hello?" 

The voice. It was faint, barely audible, but Zhou Mi used it as an anchor, used it to pry his eyes open, lids heavy and cold. His body sluggishly obeyed the instructions from his brain, neurons firing at half speed. His chest _ached_. When his eyes finally opened, just a touch, the lights above were so bright that for a moment he was blinded. 

"Hi, welcome back." The light dimmed as a head blocked them, someone hovering above him. Who? Joon… Joonmy… Zhou Mi knew that face. "Can you hear me?" 

Zhou Mi did his best to respond, but his vocal chords were stiff from disuse. His mouth opened uselessly and no sound came out through the oxygen mask around his face. For a moment there was panic, flowing through him like an icy river, as his brain desperately tried to connect to the rest of his body. He could feel himself twitching involuntarily. 

"You're okay," Joonmyeon said, his smile relieved as he grasped Zhou Mi's hand, his body warm like the gentle heat of a winter's fire against his skin. "You're fine. Welcome to the future." 

 

*

 

Zhou Mi was five when he met his destiny, holding tightly to his father's hand as he stared up in awe at the spaceship in front of them. They were at the National Space Museum, a large building stuffed full of spacecraft and educational displays, all dedicated to showcase China's glorious history in space exploration. 

China's space ambitions began during the cold war in the 1950s, but it wasn't until 2003 when they successfully sent an astronaut into space. This was quickly followed by a lunar orbit, a lunar landing, the launch and creation of a permanent space station, and it culminated in the launch of Shenzhou 28 to Mars in 2048, when four astronauts were sent to the red planet. 

"And this," his father said to him, waving his free hand proudly up at the ship that loomed above them, "This is the craft that my mother - you remember your năinai? - travelled on." There was a hitch in his father's voice that Zhou Mi was too young to understand. 

He'd heard the stories often - his grandmother had been on the first manned mission to Mars, and the second person to step foot on Martian soil. It had always been his favourite bedtime story, demanding that his father tell him just _one more time_ , until he knew it so well he could almost repeat the words in unison 

"Can we go on it, Baba?" Zhou Mi asked, tugging on his father's hand in his excitement. He had heard so much about this craft, and about his grandmother. She'd been a hero, someone that they wrote history books on. The first manned mission to Mars, the first woman to step on the surface. She was an explorer: fierce, brave, strong. And Zhou Mi remembered other things, just barely: the fact that she was kind and gentle; that she told him vivid, imaginative stories; that she walked with a cane and always had a smile for him. He could still faintly recall her scent: fresh and clean, the way laundry smelt after being removed from the dryer. 

"Not this one, my little star. But one day… maybe one day you'll have your own craft. And you'll do your own exploring," his father told him in response. As they stood and looked up at the craft, Zhou Mi wondered why his father had tears in his eyes. 

"Baba?" he asked, lower lip trembling, reaching both his arms up asking to be picked up. He didn't know why he was upset, why his father was upset, but he didn't like it. 

His father picked him up, balancing him on his hip, and Zhou Mi wound his arms around his father's neck and clung on tightly. "Shall we take a closer look?" his father asked him as they stepped closer to the barrier. "Do you want to touch it?" His father looked around quickly, before leaning forward over the barrier, so Zhou Mi could reach out a hand. 

He stretched and stretched, just barely brushing the surface of the craft with his fingers. It was surprisingly warm, seemingly thrumming with an impossible energy. 

A guard cleared their throat and Zhou Mi jerked his fingers back, hiding his face in his father's hair, feeling his father shake with laughter. 

They walked on, to the next exhibit, another spaceship that was similar to Shenzhou 28 but more streamlined. Perched on his father's hip, Zhou Mi studied his face. He was too young to understand wistfulness and longing, but he recognised there was something important there. 

"And this one," his father said and Zhou Mi turned his head to look at it, "Is my one, when my crew and I flew to study Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons. You remember which planet is Jupiter, right?"

Zhou Mi nodded. "The biggest one." Other children might've grown up reciting the alphabet, but Zhou Mi grew up reciting the planets - their names, the order they came in, and even their identifying characteristics. 

"Yes, that one. Do you remember what I told you about Europa?" Zhou Mi shook his head at that question. "It's covered in a thick crust of ice, underneath which lies a vast liquid ocean." 

"Did you walk on it, Baba?" 

"No, it was too cold, we orbited for several months before coming home. This is before you were born. So far no one has been to the surface." 

Zhou Mi looked at it thoughtfully, one hand clutched in the collar of his father's shirt. "I want to go there one day," he announced suddenly. "And to the moon, and Mars, and all of the planets." 

His father gave him a squeeze, and a kiss on the cheek to which Zhou Mi squirmed and screwed up his nose before giving in to the affection. "You can go wherever you want, my son. You can see whatever your heart desires. You are capable of anything." 

Zhou Mi was five when his destiny was written, when he decided that it laid somewhere in the stars. 

 

*

 

Zhou Mi laid on his back in his pod, legs and arms outstretched. He stared up at the ceiling, breathing deeply: in. Out. In. Out. His oxygen mask had been removed when Joonmyeon was satisfied he could breathe by himself, but the sensation of his lungs expanding still seemed a bit weird, like his body wasn't used to it. 

Joonmyeon wrapped a band around his arm, taking care not to dislodge the IV pierced into Zhou Mi's hand. Leeteuk was sitting next to Joonmyeon, and even though Zhou Mi was still feeling a bit drowsy it was obvious that he was keeping a keen eye on proceedings. 

"Do you remember your name?"

Zhou Mi opened his mouth, his throat managing to croak out a response, "Zhou Mi."

"Do you know who I am?" Joonmyeon inflated the pressure band, and it tightened around Zhou Mi's arm. "Do you remember my name?"

"Joonmyeon."

"You're doing really well." Satisfied with Zhou Mi's blood pressure, he removed the band, the sound of the velcro ripping seeming far too loud in the quiet room. "Do you know where you are?"

Zhou Mi swallowed, every response getting easier the more he spoke. "Invenio."

"What year is it?"

This made Zhou Mi's brows crease. He _knew_ but… "It was - when I - sleep - was 2104," he stuttered, the words coming slowly, swallowing hard between them. Leeteuk gave him a sympathetic smile. 

Joonmyeon smiled down at him kindly. "Sorry, that was a trick question. Can you sit up?" He grasped Zhou Mi's forearms, gently pulling him up to a sitting position. "Your vitals are good. I'm going to remove the IV now, okay?" He pulled out the needle, setting everything on the trolley next to him. 

Zhou Mi looked around him. The three of them were the only ones awake. Spread out in neat rows on the floor were their shipmates, all still asleep in their pods. 

No, not sleeping, Zhou Mi corrected himself. Cryonically frozen. 

"How long?" Zhou Mi asked Joonmyun, who was busy entering Zhou Mi's vitals into his computer. Zhou Mi knew the answer, of course. They'd all been briefed before the mission left, but _knowing_ something and _experiencing_ it were two different matters. 

Because it felt like he'd gone to sleep and woken up straight away, like no time at all had passed.

Joonmyeon stopped what he was doing, turning his whole attention back to Zhou Mi, before responding. "150 years," he said gently. "Back on Earth, it's the year 2254." 

 

*

 

Zhou Mi watched as Joonmyeon opened up the next freeze pod. Zhou Mi peeked in, noting that it was Jia inside. He had recovered enough to be able to stand, and after pulling on the clothes that Joonmyeon had set out for him, he now stood there watching as Joonmyeon went through the process to revive the next one of their crew. While Zhou Mi had been briefed on the revival process prior to being frozen himself - they all had - he still listened carefully to Joonmyeon's instructions, watching the demonstration intently. Being talked through something and actually watching it happen were very different and he didn't want to mess it up. 

Leeteuk, having seen the process once, had already left them to work on a separate pod. 

Joonmyeon gathered his equipment and supplies, and pulled two stools over to the pod. They sat down and Joonmyeon got to work on Jia.

All the liquid nitrogen that had been keeping the inner container super cold had already been drained away, and Jia's body had been slowly warmed in the pod until it reached room temperature. If Zhou Mi didn't know better, he would have thought she was dead. She was completely still, and her skin had an eerie paleness due to the lack of blood pumping through her body. 

Joonmyeon placed an oxygen mask over her face, before reaching over to turn the oxygen on. He placed a fist sized device over the bare skin of her chest and then pulled his hands back. The device blinked red - once, twice, three times, and then shocked violently. 

The monitor that was hooked up to Jia's body via electrodes on her skin beeped, and began generating a waveform across the screen. Joonmyeon watched the line pulse up and down, checking to see if she needed another shock, but he seemed satisfied with the steadiness of the rhythm. He took the device off her chest, setting it down on the trolley next to him. 

Next, Joonmyeon explained to Zhou Mi as he worked, he would go through the process of replacing the water from the cells that had been removed. All of the crew had been through the same thing. Prior to launch they had been put to sleep with a sedative, and then injected with an anticoagulant to prevent the blood from clotting. The next stage was to remove all the water from the body, by replacing the liquid with a chemical mixture called cryoprotectant, something resembling a human antifreeze. The cryoprotectant stopped ice crystals forming in the body's organs and tissues, protecting the cells from shattering during the vitrification process.

Joonmyeon inserted the first of several IVs to replace the blood and water in Jia's body and flush out the cryoprotectant. "This will take about 20 minutes," he told Zhou Mi. "After this I'll give her a couple of injections to bring her to consciousness." 

They waited in silence for the time to pass, Joonmyeon changing the blood packs when required. Once it had been completed, Joonmyeon gave Jia two injections - the first were nano-cells to help repair any damage that may have occurred during the thaw, and the second was to bring her out of sedation. When she began to stir, Joonmyeon began tapping on her collarbone, steady and firm, and eventually Jia opened her eyes with a low groan.

Joonmyeon repeated his greeting to Zhou Mi, "Welcome to the future." 

 

*

 

The last government funded space program shut down in 2091 when Zhou Mi was 13 years old. 

China's National Space Program, Guó Jiā Háng Tiān Jú, officially ended after the worst space accident in the program's history - when the first manned mission out of the solar system ceased contact after mysterious circumstances. When engineers managed to resurrect the video and radio link, they were horrified to find the five occupants of the craft deceased. 

Many theories were put forth on what exactly had occurred, but the most popular, the one that spread amongst the population like fire, was that one of the astronauts, crazed after so long in close quarters, murdered everyone on board and then took their own life. 

The truth would never be known, not with the ship continuing on its destination, a travelling graveyard unable to be stopped, a horrendous monument to what had occurred. 

Guó Jiā Háng Tiān Jú was shut down not long after, unable to recover from the criticisms thrown at it: unsafe, too expensive, _unnecessary_. It was unfortunate as it had been the last stalwart of all the public space programs. America's had unofficially ended in 2011, after the final flight and landing of Atlantis, bringing about the end of her 30 year Space Shuttle program. It had never fully recovered, limping along with small activities for many years, and NASA was quietly disbanded in 2025, so quietly that no one really noticed. 

Russia's came to an end not long after, unable to find enough money both to fund wars against its previous Soviet territories as well as her expensive and ageing space infrastructure.

India had great success for a long time, until climate change consumed almost the entirety of Bangladesh, sending refugees streaming into India's borders. With India spending a majority of her money on overcrowding and overpopulation, the Indian Space Research Organisation was eventually dissolved in 2063. 

While humanity had always been driven to explore the unknown and to push beyond scientific and technological limits, how could this be justified with the immediate and increasingly pressing needs of Earth? 

With so many problems on the planet, the majority of Earth's population questioned the purpose of exploring the universe. What was the point when there were so many people struggling on Earth? With no tangible benefit to those people who were suffering _right now_ , wasn't it just a waste of time, money and effort? 

With the cessation of Guó Jiā Háng Tiān Jú, the human race turned inwards. They stopped looking at the stars, no longer asking, "What's out there?" Instead they asked, "What can we do _here_?" 

And space exploration became the realm of only those who were incredibly wealthy, and as most people would agree: the stupid. 

Zhou Mi would gladly admit to being one of the stupid, because he grew up with the desire and never lost it. As he grew older, he raged against the short sightedness of it all. When asked to articulate exactly what he hoped to achieve in visiting space, he fell over his words in an attempt to explain it. 

How could he explain the drive, the **spirit** of exploration to those who didn't already have it? For Zhou Mi, it was part of being human. Human history was made - built - on the backs of those who dared to venture out, to carry themselves past the pockets of their known existence. Confronted with a mountain, there were those who would be consumed with the desire to climb it. With an ocean, the desire to cross it. With a universe? It was to traverse the ultimate unknown. 

For those who wanted to explore, it was never a question of why? But - why not? And also: what's out there? What can we find? How far can we go?

Sometimes Zhou Mi thought that only by leaving Earth could we truly learn what it meant to be Earthlings. 

 

*

 

Having observed the process once, Joonmyeon told Zhou Mi to go ahead and revive someone else. 

"Pod 14 is next," Joonmyeon told him as he reached into the pod and helped Jia sit up. "I'll just make sure that Jia's okay before I move on." 

Zhou Mi gathered up the necessary supplies and headed to Pod 14, unlocking the lid with his fingerprint and entering his passcode. When he saw the face of the occupant of Pod 14 his heart sank.

"Can I do someone else?" he shouted across the room to Joonmyun. 

"No," was the response. "The thawing has been staggered, and he needs to be next." 

Zhou Mi slumped a little, but he went to work. 

After 30 minutes, Pod 14's occupant was starting to stir. Leeteuk was busy at Pod 7, and Joonmyeon and Jia had just started with Pod 19, their conversation as Joonmyeon talked Jia through the process drifting across the room. Zhou Mi zoned them out, concentrating instead on what he was doing. 

"Do you remember your name?" Zhou Mi asked as his person blinked up at him. 

"Kyu… Kyuhyun," was the stuttered response.

"Do you remember who I am?" 

And at that question, pain and anger crossed Kyuhyun's face, a quick blast of emotion that sent his limbs twitching as his synapses fired. "Zhou Mi," Kyuhyun all but growled, his lips pressed together in a thin line. And Zhou Mi knew that he remembered everything. 

Zhou Mi remembered everything too - all those things about Kyuhyun that he'd desperately attempted to forget. He could still read every emotion from the lines in Kyuhyun's forehead, the angry tone in his voice, the stiffness in Kyuhyun's shoulders, his body projecting a language that only Zhou Mi could recognise.

Silenced by the force of Kyuhyun's anger, he took Kyuhyun's blood pressure. Finding it normal - everything _normal_ \- he reached in to help him sit up. But Kyuhyun immediately pushed his hands away. 

"Go away," he muttered, voice still scratchy. "Don't need you." Zhou Mi stifled a sigh, holding his hands up and palms out in a gesture of defeat. 

"I need to make sure you're fully recovered," Zhou Mi told him quietly, doing his best not to set Kyuhyun off. 

"Get someone else," Kyuhyun said forcefully, struggling to pull himself to a sitting position. "Not you." 

Kyuhyun had always been stubborn, completely immoveable on certain issues. Just like Zhou Mi, in a way, except they expressed their stubbornness differently. 

"There's no one else. You're only the fifth awake and the others are busy. Let me help you." Zhou Mi ignored Kyuhyun's noises of protest, and grabbed a hold of his arm to pull him up. Once he was in a sitting position, Zhou Mi removed the IV from Kyuhyun's hand with a swift but sure tug. "Okay?" 

Before Kyuhyun could respond, an alarm sounded, blaring and shrill, from the other side of the room. They both jumped in surprise, and any short comment Kyuhyun was about to make was swallowed.

"Shit!" Joonmyeon cursed loudly, pushing Jia out of the way as the warning light above the pod they were working on flashed. "Zhou Mi! Leeteuk!" 

Zhou Mi left Kyuhyun where he was, running over. "What can I do? What's happening?" He looked into the pod and his heart clenched as he realised it was Jinri. 

Joonmyeon had his hands cupped around Jinri's head, doing his best to prevent her skull from cracking against the pod as she seized, harsh spasms that jerked her entire body violently. Zhou Mi and Leeteuk had both received some medical training prior to leaving Earth, but Joonmyeon was their main medic, and the way he was cursing under his breath was a really bad sign. 

"Vitals?" Joonmyeon asked Zhou Mi. 

Zhou Mi looked at the screen, noting how the heartbeat was all over the place, the electrical activity in the brain under obvious disruption. "Not good, " Zhou Mi breathed, stating the obvious. Leeteuk was pale, eyes big as he chewed on his lip, all of them helpless as they watched Jinri slip away from them. 

 

* 

 

The first five were silent, standing around Jinri's pod looking down at her body. She lay there pale, motionless, eyes closed. 

She looked peaceful. 

"We don't know what went wrong," Leeteuk said, hands tightly clenched in fists. It must've been difficult as Commander to have lost someone so soon into the mission. "If we don't know… how can we take the risk of unfreezing the others?"

Joonmyeon's eyes were rimmed red, face haggard, but he was firm. "We have to. The thawing is too far advanced to stop. If we don't complete it, they'll die. And," he sagged a little, "We're 13 light years from home, 150 years from the Earth we knew. There's no going back." 

Zhou Mi looked around the room, where the remaining 14 laid in suspended animation in their pods. "Joonmyeon is right. We have to go on. There's only forward." 

It was a truth that every single one of them knew when they joined: they would either complete the mission, or die in the attempt. There was no way of going back into the past, to the life and home they once had.

The problem with space was its vastness - huge, enormous distances that couldn't be covered in a human lifetime. While technology had advanced enough for Invenio to be able to travel to the edge of the solar system in less than two centuries, it hadn't advanced enough to travel close to the speed of light. Even if the technology did exist, due to the effects of time dilation, travelling at light speed for a few days would mean hundreds of years passing for the rest of the universe. 

They could only ever go ahead, never back. 

Jia reached for Zhou Mi's hand as she nodded in agreement. "We go forward." 

"Forward," Joonmyeon and Kyuhyun said in unision. 

Leeteuk shook his head. They waited.

"Forward," Leeteuk finally agreed. 

 

*

 

150 years ago, the Earth they knew was collapsing around them. 

Climate change had melted most of the polar ice caps, submerging half of Earth's land, displacing hundreds of millions of people. Many countries and regions all but disappeared into the ocean: the Netherlands, Denmark, Bangladesh, Belgium, as well as some of the most important coastal cities: London, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai. 

Along with sea level rise, extreme weather events: hurricanes, typhoons and floods, occurred more regularly. They were much more devastating than in the past as the population tried to survive on less and less land. 

It was only a matter of time until a catastrophe wiped out humanity. With that in mind, a small eccentric group of Chinese and South Korean billionaires looked towards the stars for a solution. 

It came in the form of Kapteyn b, the closest habitable exoplanet to the Milky Way solar system, 13 light years away from Earth. Mars had been ruled out decades ago as a potential alternative: it was situated too far from the sun, and had too little mass to create an Earth-like atmosphere. But Kapteyn b, from all observations, was as close to ideal as possible. It was a rocky planet that orbited its star, the red dwarf Kapteyn, in the estimated habitable zone. Kapteyn b was a large planet, five times larger than Earth, and significantly older - over twice the age of the young blue and green planet. Detailed observations showed the almost certain chance that Kapteyn b held water - liquid water - and therefore the ability to sustain human life. 

It was the only option available. 

The only problem - Kapteyn b was 13 light years away from Earth, a distance so vast that even with the advancement of nuclear fusion rockets, the trip would take 150 years. Even with longevity treatments, to travel there and back was far longer than the entirety of one person's lifetime. 

In an effort to save human civilization - and of course, themselves - the group of billionaires created a mission, a crazy, brilliant, insane mission: putting together a small group of people to travel to Kapteyn b to start a new human colony. 

They were hedging their bets: while the astronauts - mostly made up of scientists and engineers - would be cryogenically frozen for the long trip to the edge of the Milky Way, the search for other alternatives would continue. If nothing was found, the billionaires would freeze themselves, set themselves in orbit, and wait for a message from Invenio. If a success message was received, computers would guide their craft towards their new home.

But who would take a chance on such a perilous mission, one with so many challenges and such little chance of success? Only those who believed that their destiny lay somewhere out past Earth. 

People like Zhou Mi. 

And, as it turned out, Kyuhyun.

 

*

 

The atmosphere on Invenio, which should have been one of celebration, was glum. They'd lost one of their crew so soon, and even though the rest of the revivals were a success, the loss hung heavy on them all. 

It wasn't that they were a close group. The bulk of them had only met a month before their departure, but the knowledge that they were all alone in the vastness meant that life was beyond precious. 

Leeteuk, their Commander, their leader, completed the sending of the message back towards Earth. It was simple and merely stated that Invenio had been successfully reanimated and they were close to Kapteyn b. Thirteen years would pass on Earth before the message would be received, and another 13 years for any reply to be received by Invenio. There was no way of knowing how things back home had progressed in the time they'd been in suspended animation. 

Had - as feared - Earth consumed itself? Or had humankind managed to solve the multitude of problems and managed to create a stable harmonious planet? Or had another colony been set up elsewhere in the universe? Had faster than light travel been cracked? They wouldn't know for another 26 Earth years. 

The crew clustered in the pod room, waiting until Kangin, their main mechanical tech, gave the all clear. It took a while before he completed his check, but finally he proclaimed it safe and everyone dispersed to their assigned areas. 

Invenio was unlike the Shenzhou 28 that Zhou Mi had seen in his youth. Invenio was designed for deep space travel, a ship with a long thin shaft that had drive sections located far from the habitable sections. She looked like a thin stick with arms, spinning to create artificial gravity, with her "head" being a large round whipple shield. This hypervelocity impact shield, built to withstand collisions with micrometeoroids and other debris, protected what lay at the other end of the stick - the habitable areas where the crew lived and worked. 

With their history, it was both unfortunate and also foreseeable that Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun had the same assigned area. Both biologists, though specialising in different areas, there was no way of steering clear of one another. But Kyuhyun swept past Zhou Mi without a word, or even a look, sending Zhou Mi's heart into freefall. 

Zhou Mi had given up everything to be here. **Everything.**

If he'd known that Invenio meant reuniting with his past love, what choices would he have made differently? Hindsight mocked him now, mocked him relentlessly. But it was too late for regrets. 

The first time Zhou Mi saw Kyuhyun after many, many years apart, he wondered if life was playing a joke on him. 

It was the first gathering of the Invenio crew - a month before their scheduled departure. He'd been flown to Xichang, a city located in the south of Sichuan province, for final training and preparations. All the astronauts had been trained separately, and as the mission was top-secret, Zhou Mi had no idea of who else had been signed up, or even how many of them there were. 

Zhou Mi had been the last to arrive, and when he walked into the room where the others were waiting, Kyuhyun was the first person he saw, his eyes drawn to a face that was both familiar and unfamiliar. No one noticed his bitten off gasp of surprise except Kyuhyun.

Kyuhyun looked at him once, steady and firm, and then his gaze slid through him - as if Zhou Mi didn't exist, as if he was of no importance. As if they hadn't spent five years together, blissfully happy, until… 

Until Zhou Mi left.

When Zhou Mi left, he'd thrown himself into his work, his research, his training, desperately ignoring the part of himself that deeply regretted leaving Kyuhyun behind. Because without his world, without his dream, who was Zhou Mi? Nothing. All his life he'd known that his destiny was in deep space, beyond the blue green sphere of Earth. He'd always known that there was _more_. He was going to be a part of it, he was going to explore and create a new history for humanity. 

He would never have guessed that Kyuhyun could be a part of that too.

Kyuhyun ignoring him was nothing less than he deserved. But still, he wanted to laugh hysterically at life's cruelty as he was introduced to the others. Because he'd left - left Kyuhyun - because he'd been afraid that his love for him would anchor him forever to Earth. And yet here they were, together, about to embark on a mission that would take them to the stars, to the future. And wasn't it funny that perhaps with one misguided choice in his past Zhou Mi might have managed to fuck up any chance that it would be successful. 

Back on Invenio, Zhou Mi's memories were interrupted by an icy tone, colder than the temperature of space outside their tiny ship. "Excuse me." 

Zhou Mi just blinked at him, surprised that Kyuhyun was speaking to him. "I need to get past," Kyuhyun said, face blank, and Zhou Mi blushed as he realised he was blocking the door. 

"Sorry," he said and it echoed in his head, all the apologies he'd never said out loud. 

 

*

 

A year before Invenio departed, Zhou Mi was flown to Beijing for his interview. Zhou Mi had always hated China's capital city - it was sprawling, noisy, polluted, and the stars weren't visible at night, blocked out by haze and light pollution. 

Zhou Mi's interview was conducted on the top floor of a gleaming glass and steel tower, so tall it dominated the skyline of Beijing. He walked into the room to find a panel of three men and two women, who he was surprised to see appeared to be around his age. Although, admittedly, it was difficult to tell sometimes with plastic surgery and longevity treatments. 

Zhou Mi took a seat in front of them, and one of the men looked up from the file he'd been reading. He didn't bother to make introductions - it wasn't necessary. Zhou Mi didn't need to know who they were. 

"Zhou Mi, tell us - why should we pick you."

Zhou Mi started with a brief rundown of his history - his education, his scientific credentials, his research and papers on astroecology and terraforming, but the man shook his head dismissively. "We already know all that - it's in your file. Why should we pick YOU?"

Zhou Mi wondered briefly what the other applicants had answered to this question. Would they have pretended to be altruistic and noble, making up some bullshit about wanting to save the human race? He looked at the group and wondered if they would be satisfied with such a simple, obvious answer. He didn't believe that this group was motivated by saving humanity. He thought that was a side goal, something nice to have. They wanted to save themselves. 

And who could blame them? Power and money would mean nothing on an Earth that was no longer habitable for human life. 

Zhou Mi took another moment to think about it before taking a deep swallow. He looked at them all in turn, his gaze steady and clear. "You should pick me because, whatever this mission entails, I will keep going until it succeeds."

One of the women, thin and stony faced, said in response, "I'm sure you've heard the rumours about this trip."

"Yes."

She pursed her lips, slick with bright red lipstick, "The rumours are true." And Zhou Mi understood what she was telling him: this was a mission of no return. Where ever they were going, there would be no coming back to Earth. 

"That's perfect," Zhou Mi replied. "I have nothing to hold me here." 

And finally she'd smiled at him, but there was no warmth in her expression. "Your background - your family - is certainly impressive. Thank you, Zhou Mi. We'll be in touch." 

Four months later, he received notice that he had been selected.

 

*

 

"Baba," Zhou Mi said to his father, little hand outstretched as he puffed his way up the mountain path. "Wait, Baba." 

His father slowed, waiting for him to catch up, leaning down to clasp his son's mittened hand. "Sorry son, I'm too eager." His father adjusted the backpack he was wearing, before reaching down to pull Zhou Mi up, lifting him on to his hip. Zhou Mi snuggled his face into his father's shoulder, arms tight around his neck. 

They were off to see Zhou Mi's grandmother - his father's mother. She lived in a remote mountain village in south-west China where there was no road access. The trip was long: they'd flown, rode a bus, and now there was a couple hours trek uphill. The terrain was dramatic and beautiful as they climbed, the mountain steep, with its sides cut into staggered rice terraces. 

"Will she remember me, Baba?" Zhou Mi asked as his father puffed his way up the steep steps, weighed down by both a backpack and a four year old child. 

"Of course she will," was the response. "You are her most precious star." 

Even at his young age, Zhou Mi knew that meant something special. His father told him often that his grandmother loved space, loved the stars, so to be the most precious of them _all_ was... he couldn't help but wriggle a little in glee. 

"Hey, careful," his father admonished gently, holding him tighter. "I don't want to drop you." 

Not too long after they mounted a crest, and the village came into sight. His father put Zhou Mi down and they walked towards it together, being met by a few village dogs as they neared. Zhou Mi let go of his father's hand so he could pet the dogs, who wagged their tails happily at him, yelping in excitement. 

The village was simple, with the houses constructed of weathered wood and grey tile roofs, surrounded by natural lush green foliage. Zhou Mi's grandmother was waiting by the stone arch that marked the entranceway of the village, leaning heavily on a dark twisted cane, her hair blindingly white amongst the green. 

"Mama!" Zhou Mi's father cried, dropping his backpack to the ground so he could wrap her in a tight hug. Zhou Mi's father towered over her, an entire head taller, and she seemed particularly frail in his embrace. 

Zhou Mi tugged on the back of his father's shirt. "Baba!" 

His father pulled away, wiping at his face with the back of his arm, encouraging Zhou Mi to step him front of him. "Zhou Mi, say hello to your năinai."

"Mimi," she said, carefully lowering herself to a crouch so she was at Zhou Mi's eye level. "You remember your năinai? Look at how tall you've gotten." She cooed over him, petting his cheeks, and he looked at her curiously. This was the grandmother he'd heard so much about. She was smaller than he expected, having built her up in his mind from all the stories he'd been told. Her face was relatively unlined, but her head was topped by thick bright white hair, and her age could be told in the hunching of her back. But her eyes were kind, and, as she gave Zhou Mi a hug, she smelt nice - fresh and clean, the scent of the world after rain. 

Later that night, well after the sun had set and they'd eaten a simple dinner, Zhou Mi's grandmother told him to put on his coat.

"Ma, please," Zhou Mi's father had said, exasperated. "It's late, and it's cold." 

"We'll just have to wrap up warmly then, won't we?" she said to Zhou Mi with a wink as she wrapped a scarf around his neck and helped him put on his mittens. 

"At least wear another coat," Zhou Mi's father grumbled, but he put his one on as well. 

They left the house together, Zhou Mi clutching on to his father's hand tightly as his grandmother lit their way with a torch. She led them on a short walk out of the village, and when they reached a rocky outcrop she stopped. 

"Sit, sit," she said, lowering herself to the ground carefully. Zhou Mi's father grumbled to himself, draping one of the blankets he'd taken from the house over her shoulders, before sitting and pulling Zhou Mi into his lap. He wrapped them both in the second blanket, and Zhou Mi leaned back against his father's chest, a little sleepy. 

"Look up, Zhou Mi," his grandmother told him, and he rubbed at his eyes and looked at where she was pointing - up into the sky. 

Up here, in the mountains, the night sky was clearer than he'd ever seen it, lit with a multitude of stars that were impossible to see in the brightness of the city. 

"It's so pretty," Zhou Mi said in awe, the stars standing out so starkly in the moonless sky that he felt as if he could reach out and touch them. 

"Isn't it just?" his grandmother sighed, looking at the sky wistfully. "The view from up there, looking down, is just as beautiful." She pointed out a few constellations, before clapping her hands happily. "See that one, Zhou Mi? The red star that's just risen above the horizon? That's Mars. You know I went there once? A long time ago." 

"What was it like, năinai?" Zhou Mi asked as he stared at it. Mars shone brightly, a reddish object surrounded by other stars. 

"It was the second most amazing experience of my life," she said. "After having your father and you, of course." She stroked his hair gently and Zhou Mi turned to snuggle further into his father's lap, finally succumbing to the urge to close his eyes. 

While he was half asleep, he could just hear his father and grandmother talking quietly.

"You turned it down?" his grandmother asked.

"I had to. Zhou Mi needs me. I have to think of him now. I can't be selfish anymore, it's not just about me."

"Yes, when you have children, everything changes. Particularly when… son, I'm sorry about her. I'm sorry I wasn't there at the end." 

There was a sigh and his father's arms tightened around Zhou Mi. "You should come back with us," his father said. 

"What would I do in the city? You can't even see the stars from there."

"But there's doctors and hospitals, and -"

"No, no. It's too late for all of that."

"You should try at least."

"I'm afraid it's too late for me. But I'm okay. I'm happy. Happy that you're here, that Zhou Mi is here. I'm satisfied."

Zhou Mi could feel his father sigh, and he curled himself up, pressing his face into his father's chest. He didn't understand what they were talking about, just heard the cadence of their conversation, like a melancholy song. 

"Has he fallen asleep? We should head back." 

Zhou Mi felt his father stand, lifting him up, but he slept on the short walk back. 

On another night, as they sat out in the cold air again looking upwards, Zhou Mi's grandmother talked to him about death while his father shifted uncomfortably. 

Zhou Mi didn't really understand death, just that everyone had to go away eventually, just like his mother had. "But where do they go?" he asked his grandmother innocently. 

Instead of answering, she asked him, "Did you know that we're all the product of the stars?" Zhou Mi tilted his head skywards, the twinkling lights shining so brightly above them, but he didn't understand. 

"It's true," she said. "If we break ourselves down to our tiniest of components, every element inside us was formed at the heart of a star. When a star nears the end of its life, it explodes, creating and scattering different elements across the universe - all of which contributed to the making of Earth, and to us." 

"Ma," Zhou Mi's father interrupted, "What are you saying? He doesn't understand any of this."

Zhou Mi's grandmother ignored him, continuing, "So the cosmos is within us. When we die, we return to it - we become star-stuff again." 

Zhou Mi's father scoffed at her, pulling Zhou Mi's hat further down to properly cover his ears. 

"I understand," Zhou Mi protested, even though he didn't, squirming in his father's hold. Although it was all beyond his comprehension, he still liked listening to his grandmother speak, liked the tales she weaved, the stories of alien places and worlds that she described in vivid detail. 

But his father said firmly, "I think that's enough of that for one night." 

On a different night, she spoke to him about time. It was even colder that evening, Zhou Mi's nose and cheeks bright red. His father had wanted them to stay inside, but Zhou Mi pouted and begged and cried until his father relented. 

Zhou Mi's nose was still clogged with the tears of his tantrum, and he wiped it on the back of his sleeve as his father clucked disapprovingly, finding a handkerchief from the depths of his pocket and dragging it across Zhou Mi's face. 

"Did you know that seeing the stars is to look into the past?" his grandmother asked him. "The light that we see is from millions and billions of years ago. It's a form of time travel - we're seeing into the past, into the universe as it once was." 

"I don't understand, năinai," he'd told her. 

"You will one day, my most precious one. One day." 

Weeks passed like this. Until one day Zhou Mi's father told him that tomorrow they'd be going home. 

"No!" Zhou Mi pouted, wrapping himself around his grandmother's good leg. "I want to stay with năinai." Life in the village was simple, but he'd grown to love it. During the day he'd play with the few children who lived in the village, and at night, if it wasn't raining, he'd go with his grandmother and father to see the stars. And he loved his grandmother, who doted on him and spoiled him, telling him story after story from her youth. 

"You have to go home, little one," she told him. 

Zhou Mi still didn't fully understand death, although now he understood that it was going to happen to his grandmother soon. "But I don't want to. Can't I stay here with you?" 

"Ah, I wish you could, my star, my precious baby star." His grandmother cuddled him closely, letting him hide his face in her scratchy sweater. "But you'll remember - won't you? Look for me in the sky. I'll always be with you. All you have to do is look up."

After they left he never saw her again. 

But he looked for her every time he looked at the stars.


	2. Invenio

"I love being in your lab," Jia commented as she gently stroked a green leaf with her finger. It was tiny, barely bigger than a thumb, and a sickly yellow-green, but Jia treated it with obvious reverence. She'd spent enough time with Zhou Mi over the past few weeks to understand how difficult it'd been to get it to that point. 

Zhou Mi smiled down at her from where he was perched on a ladder. He had to admit that he had a pretty great space. The work room that he shared with Kyuhyun was one of the larger ones on Invenio, and though small by Earth standards it was practically palatial in the compact conditions on the ship. 

The left wall of their lab held a large floor to ceiling framework for growing plants, constructed to Zhou Mi's specifications. The cubes on the frame were all individually lit by lamps, each holding small clear pots that were suspended by thick wires in the middle. In addition, Zhou Mi had a hydroponics container in the centre of the room, plus a large bench that held several clear domes. Although the lab was shared, the allocation wasn't equal, with Zhou Mi's set up taking up much more space. Kyuhyun's desk and workbench was squeezed into the right third of the room. 

Up on the ladder, screwdriver in hand, Zhou Mi was leaning into one of the cubes, having noticed previously that one of the lamps was flickering. He had his tongue between his teeth as he finished securing a screw. That done, he descended, stepping down carefully and gingery. He'd learnt from experience that muscle memory was hard to overcome, and while the ship had its own gravity it was different to that on Earth. His shins were already bruised by his numerous knocks against the rungs. 

Safely back on the ground, he reached over to the control box and the light flared to life, a bright white with no flickering, and Zhou Mi fiddled with the settings until it dimmed in intensity. 

"Where's Kyuhyun? I never see him in here."

He shrugged in response. Kyuhyun was avoiding him, leaving the room when he entered, or ignoring his presence entirely. As Jia was only ever in the lab when Zhou Mi was, it wasn't surprising that she never saw him. 

Zhou Mi picked up a spray bottle, giving the plants a light spritz. The one that Jia had been toying with received a slightly heavier misting. 

"What soil is that one in?" Jia asked, curious, taking a closer look. 

All the pots on the wall held either lunar or Martian soil, retrieved from previous landings. It would've been costly to obtain, each cubic metre of dirt worth several million dollars. Still, Zhou Mi mused, when you were a billionaire, what was several million dollars? All the plants in these soils were stunted and sickly in a similar manner to each other, but Zhou Mi was satisfied with the way they were growing. It had taken him a lot of research and work to engineer plants that were even able to successfully sprout in these alien, low-nutrient soils. 

The plants in the domes on the bench weren't growing well either. He used the domes to control oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, in an attempt to engineer something that might thrive in the alien atmosphere of Kapteyn b. It was a difficult task. While he didn't know the exact atmosphere of the new planet - that was Kyuhyun's area, and Zhou Mi couldn't see them having a brainstorming session about it anytime soon - Zhou Mi had his own theories to work with. He'd been carefully taking note of different combinations of air quality, water and light.

They would see when they arrived, but Zhou Mi suspected that flora would be necessary to colonise Kapteyn b. The planet was unlikely to be an exact replica of Earth, and just because it was strongly suspected to contain liquid water, it didn't mean that it was suitable for human life. There were a couple of ways to deal with that - one would be to build habitable domes in which to live on the surface. Alternatively, they could attempt to terraform the planet, deliberately engineering Kapten b to mimic the atmosphere, temperature and ecology to be similar enough to Earth so that human life could be supported. 

Depending on the existing state of their new home, terraforming could be easy - but it was likely to be incredibly difficult. No planet had, since they left Earth anyway, ever been successfully terraformed. Zhou Mi believed strongly that they had the technological capability - this group had been specifically chosen for this very reason - however until they actually arrived it would be impossible to know for sure.

Either way, Zhou Mi found the prospect exciting. And he longed to discuss this with Kyuhyun - when they had been together they used to have long, exciting theoretical conversations about terraforming and life on other extraterrestrial planets. 

But that was a long time ago.

"It's dinner time soon," Jia said as Zhou Mi finished tending to his plants, putting his spray bottle away and wiping his hands clean. Leeteuk insisted that the entire crew gather at least once a day to eat a meal. It was an attempt to promote unity and closeness in an otherwise diverse group of people. 

They headed to the mess together. The habitable part of Invenio consisted of four decks. The bottom deck was a warehouse, holding weaponry and machinery, plus access to an airlock and gym. The third deck held the cabins and washrooms, the second deck was made up of laboratories, workshops and an infirmary, and the top deck held the control room, a kitchen, and the pod room which was now used as a main gathering area and mess. 

Jia and Zhou Mi were the last to arrive for dinner, and Zhou Mi finally tracked down his missing roommate. Kyuhyun was sitting and talking to Changmin, their head engineer, who gave Zhou Mi a wave as he entered. Kyuhyun didn't bother to acknowledge him, but the last free seat was next to him, and Zhou Mi slid in quietly. 

Changmin leaned over Kyuhyun to speak to Zhou Mi. "How's the growing going?" All the colonists had been very interested in Zhou Mi's experiments. Many of the crew didn't have much to do until they actually arrived at Kapteyn b, and Zhou Mi found that many of the others seemed to enjoy popping in. The ship was fairly drab, mostly silver and grey, and Zhou Mi supposed that the greenery in his lab was both calming and a link with home. 

"About the same," Zhou Mi replied. From his other side, Fei handed him a bowl, and he thanked her gratefully despite the fact that it looked grey and unappetising. The ship was still living on supplies of space food; food that had been freeze dried that simply required rehydration to prepare. While the food tasted okay - Zhou Mi took a sniff at his dish and decided that today's meal was black bean rice - it had a tendency to look a bit like mush after the water had been added. In time, the crew would need to produce their own food supply, with Ryeowook was in charge of food production, but for now food was a simple affair. 

Across the table, Joonmyeon was frowning down at his own meal. 

"The mush isn't to your liking?" Changmin teased. 

"I'd kill for a steak," Zitao, their robotics engineer, piped up, making a face at his bowl as he pushed his rice around with a spoon. 

There were sighs around the table at the thought of steak. It may only been a few weeks since revival, but apparently it was long enough for everyone to miss things from home. And miss home. 

"I miss ice cream," Luna said, head cupped in the palm of her hand as she propped her elbow on the table. "With chocolate sauce." 

Everyone else joined in, vocalising the food that they missed: pizza, burgers, pork chops. Someone - Fei - even said broccoli, to which the table responded with a chorus of boos. 

Zhou Mi ate silently, letting the others speak. 

"I really miss the ocean," Zitao said quietly once the food talk had died down. "I used to live by the sea." 

"I miss my cat," Jia added, and the nostalgia talk began again. 

"What about you, Mi?" Changmin asked, noting his silence. "What do you miss?" 

Zhou Mi swallowed the rest of his mouthful. He didn't really miss anything… did he? This had always been his dream, his goal, the fate that he'd worked so hard for. He opened his mouth to give a flippant reason to find Kyuhyun staring at him, and his words died in his throat. 

_I miss Kyuhyun._

He tore his gaze away and forced a smile on his face. "I miss sunshine," he finally said. 

"That doesn't count," Jia complained. "When we arrive on Kapteyn b, there will be sunshine." 

It wouldn't be the same though. Earth's sun was a yellow star, while Kapteyn b's sun was a red dwarf, both smaller and cooler than the sun that they knew. 

"Well Yesung can create you a cat," Zhou Mi shot back, to which Jia rolled her eyes and huffed. But Yesung agreed. 

"I can. Not for a while, not until we get settled, but I can. I brought DNA samples with me." He looked thoughtful. "Maybe one day we could even have steak." 

Ryeowook stood up, patting him on the hand and starting to clear the dishes from the people who'd finished eating. "One day we will definitely have steak. But we won't need you to create a frankencow for it."

Yesung scoffed at him. "It wouldn't be a frankencow, I wouldn't need to change the DNA. Anyway, how is your frankenflesh any better?" 

"It's much better! It uses up less energy and space, and there's no moral quandaries in eating lab grown flesh."

"Moral quandaries??"

This turned into an argument - thankfully not too heated, considering the topic, but an argument nevertheless - to which Leeteuk had to finally interrupt. "Okay, okay. Enough guys. Go back to whatever you were doing." 

Everyone started to disperse. Zhou Mi started to stand when Kyuhyun finally spoke to him. 

"You never liked the sun when we were together." 

Zhou Mi was so startled that Kyuhyun was talking to him that he didn't immediately reply. 

"I guess people change," he finally stuttered. 

Kyuhyun gave him a cool look, pushing his seat out and standing up. "Yeah they do." 

 

*

 

"Zhou Mi." 

Zhou Mi had finished rinsing off his bowl and was putting it away in the cupboard when Leeteuk interrupted. Everyone else had long gone to their own labs or the sleep cabin, while Zhou Mi finished tidying up after the meal. 

"What was that before?"

Zhou Mi played dumb. "What do you mean?"

"That exchange between you and Kyuhyun."

"Nothing," Zhou Mi lied, but he knew Leeteuk wouldn't drop it. He couldn't afford to - he couldn't have his crew fighting already. They were in such close quarters, so far from home, that everyone had to at least pretend to get along. 

Leeteuk narrowed his eyes at him, blocking Zhou Mi from leaving. "Do you two know each other before? The first time you met everyone - I saw the way you looked at him. No one looks like that at a stranger." 

Zhou Mi shook his head, but was unable to directly lie. "It doesn't matter."

"Fuck," Leeteuk swore, as he realised the truth. "I should've asked you back then. You two have a history, don't you?" He paced angrily before coming back to Zhou Mi. "You should've told me! This could jeopardise everything!"

Zhou Mi knew that already. "It was too late," Zhou Mi protested. "By the time I knew it was too late." 

Leeteuk pointed a finger at him warningly. "I don't know what happened between the two of you - but fix it. Don't fuck this up for everyone else." With that threat he stalked out. 

Fix it. How was Zhou Mi meant to fix things when Kyuhyun quite rightly hated his guts? Zhou Mi may as well sprout wings and fly. 

 

*

 

The day Zhou Mi left Earth, his father came to say goodbye.

"So this is your crew," his father asked, looking around the room at everyone saying their goodbyes. Zhou Mi knew the moment he saw Kyuhyun by the way he stiffened. "You didn't tell me Kyuhyun was on this mission."

"Ba, not so loud." Zhou Mi swallowed hard, hoping that Kyuhyun hadn't heard. "I didn't know until after I'd already signed up."

"You never told me what happened with him." When Zhou Mi left, he went straight to his father's farm. It was a long journey, but to his father's credit when Zhou Mi showed up on the doorstep, disheveled and obviously heartbroken, he didn't ask any questions. 

Zhou Mi had been thankful for that at the time. He wouldn't have known what to say, could hardly articulate it in his own mind. _I left him because I didn't know myself anymore._ Was that the truth? 

"He called me, you know. After you showed up," his father told him now. Zhou Mi was surprised - his father had never mentioned it.

"Did he tell you -?"

"He never said what happened, just asked if you were there. I lied to him. I told him you were with me for a couple of days, and then you'd gone, and I didn't have an address or phone number. That you were going to contact me after you settled." His father seemed regretful. "I didn't want to lie to him, but… you're my son. No matter what, you are always my first priority." 

Zhou Mi hated himself for that, hated that his father had lied for him. Kyuhyun had always gotten along so well with his father - he'd been treated like a second son. There'd been genuine love and affection there, from both parts. 

His father put his hands on Zhou Mi's shoulders, turning him so he could look directly into his eyes. Zhou Mi noted the wrinkles dragging them down at the corners. Had they always been so deep? "You know you don't have to do this. It's not too late to pull out."

Zhou Mi had never considered quitting. He shook his head stubbornly. "I don't want to pull out. I want to go."

His father released him with a sigh, reaching up to brush Zhou Mi's fringe out of his eyes. "Even as a child you were like this. When you've made up your mind, you always see it through." His father gave him an affectionate smile, his eyes misty with nostalgia. "I remember your teachers always used to tell me that you were the sweetest and yet most contrary child they'd ever met. You never listened to 'no', you'd smile and nod as if you heard it and then ignore it." 

"I wasn't that bad…"

"Yes you were. Do you remember when we first moved to the farm? I didn't want you to come out to the fields, I sat you down and told you to stay in the house. And you smiled at me, so sweetly, and said obediently, 'yes Baba'. Ten minutes later I saw your little form trotting after me and I knew that it was hopeless to get you to stay behind." 

"I just wanted to be with you." Zhou Mi didn't remember that exact experience that his father described, but he did remember always wanting to be with his father, as if part of him was worried that he would go _away_ like his mother and his grandmother had. 

"Perhaps. I must admit that I didn't try very hard after that because I did love having you with me." His father smiled softly, leaning in to give him a hug. Zhou Mi folded himself into his father's familiar embrace, soaking it in for the last time. His father's arms tightened around him. "I'm so proud of you, you know? I've always been so proud of you." His voice cracked and he laughed a little, self-deprecatingly. "Sorry. I told myself I wasn't going to cry."

"Baba…" Zhou Mi pulled back to see his father's face, his heart aching in his chest. 

"Ah." His father smiled but he rubbed his eyes. "You haven't called me that since you were a young boy." 

Now Zhou Mi wanted to cry. "Baba, I love you so much." More than anyone, his father understood the drive, the urge to go, to explore, but saying goodbye was more difficult than Zhou Mi had imagined. And it suddenly hit him - he would never see him again, would never again be able to talk to him, ask his advice, hug him, tell him how much he loved him - it felt as if the pain was going to tear him in two. 

"Ahhh, I'm sorry," his father apologised again as he wiped his cheeks and then reached up to wipe Zhou Mi's. All around them was the hushed sounds of tearful farewells. "While I'm sad to see you go I'm still happy for you, proud of you. You're doing something people can only dream of." 

A familiar heavy guilt surfaced in Zhou Mi and he found himself doing his own apologising. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that you had to give yours up for me."

His father looked at him in surprise. "What are you talking about?"

"You quit the space program for me. You were grounded because of me." Zhou Mi knew that his father had loved it. It was evident by the pride, the joy that shone from him whenever he told Zhou Mi stories about his past and his achievements. 

"Son… where has this come from? Did I say something, did I do something, to make you think that?" 

Zhou Mi thought back, really thought, casting his mind back through his memories and was surprised to find them empty. "I just - I just assumed." His father always spoke so fondly of his time in the agency, in space. But it all ended when Zhou Mi came along. 

"Mi," his father said, clutching his shoulders again. "I have _never_ regretted giving it for you. **Never.** You have always been the most important thing in my life, the thing I've loved the most. Yes, I loved what I did, but I love you more, and nothing has brought me more happiness than you. You are my star, my universe, and if I was given the choice a million times over, it would always be you."

But… that changed everything. His entire life, Zhou Mi had lived with the guilt of knowing that his father gave up everything for him. He'd assumed that - if he had been given a choice - he would have chosen his dreams. 

Zhou Mi couldn't help but look across the room at Kyuhyun and for the first time he let himself admit that, perhaps, he'd been _wrong_. 

 

*

 

Zhou Mi was born in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. Wuhan was a major hub in central China, and like most cities in the country, it sprawled across the terrain, packed with buildings, people, and cars. 

Zhou Mi didn't retain many memories of his birthplace because when he was six, his father packed their lives up, and they left the city for the countryside - an unusual move, with most people going the other way: from the country to the city. They moved to Yunnan, a province with a mild and temperate climate, that accounted for 50% of China's total cut flower production. It was here that Zhou Mi's father purchased a small flower growing farm. 

It would be no lie to say that growing up (and even in adulthood), Zhou Mi adored and idolised his father, a man who had given up so much for him. He was the epitome of sacrifice, and Zhou Mi was reminded of this whenever his father came home to their cottage after the sun had set, dirt on his face and hands, tiredness collecting in the wrinkles on his face. 

If only Zhou Mi hadn't been around, his father's life would have been entirely different. Before Zhou Mi he flew jet planes, and then trained to become an astronaut, culminating in commanding the mission that orbited Europa. His father was intelligent, worldly, educated, and he gave it all away to grow flowers to sell to the rich. 

Not that he ever bemoaned his lot or expressed dissatisfaction with how his life had taken a 180° turn. But Zhou Mi thought that it must've stuck in his throat - that feeling of "what if". What could he have been if Zhou Mi hadn't existed? Where would he have gone? He could have achieved great things until the space program was shut down. 

Despite the feelings of guilt that Zhou Mi grew up on, he had a happy childhood. During holidays he trailed after his father like a shadow, wandering up the rows of plants and mimicking his father's actions. On clear nights, they'd sit outside and his father taught him to identify all the different constellations, so easily visible in the skies above their property. 

He never knew how his father had acquired it or where it was from, but his most treasured possession was a small red rock, about the size of a child's fist. When Zhou Mi was very young, he wasn't allowed to hold it, in case he dropped it. When he became older, his father was more relaxed, and often Zhou Mi would sit on the grass with the rock clutched in his hands. 

It was never confirmed, but Zhou Mi always suspected - by the reverence that his father treated it with - that it was from Mars. Zhou Mi used to spend hours looking at it, wondering if perhaps his grandmother had smuggled it home from her mission. Sometimes he'd hold it and whisper up to the stars, "Năinai, can you hear me?" 

So it was no surprise that Zhou Mi grew up to love both space and botany, two interests that were at opposite ends of the spectrum. One existed outside of Earth, and one wholly of Earth. One where Zhou Mi looked up and out, and one where he looked down. 

His father used to tease him, ruffling his hair, "You have your head in the stars, but your hands in the dirt."

To which Zhou Mi would roll his eyes. He'd learnt it from his father, after all. 

When Zhou Mi was older, he managed to combine his two interests. By the time he reached college, the Chinese National Space Program had shut down years ago, and becoming an astronaut was a dead end job. So Zhou Mi focussed on his other interest, becoming immersed in ecosystems and botany. Through this, he began to question how ecology might work on extraterrestrial bodies, somehow bringing his 'hands in the dirt and head in the stars' together. 

 

*

 

Days passed slowly on board the ship. They were still six months away from reaching Kapteyn b, having been revived early to prepare for their arrival. It would also take that long to slow the ship enough to enter Kapteyn b's orbit rather than shooting straight past. 

For some, there was much to do during this time. Zhou Mi busied himself with his plants, visited Ryeowook in his lab to assist with food production, as well as spending time in the gym. Inside the gym there were weight machines and a circular exercise track. The track was somewhat like a huge treadmill, rotating automatically and continuously around the outer edge of the bottom deck.

Back on Earth, Zhou Mi exercised regularly but he had never worked out as often as onboard Invenio. Unfortunately it was necessary, with all the crew needing to spend a couple of hours each day in the gym. While the ship had artificial gravity, it wasn't as strong as back on Earth, and the exercise was important to ensure their muscles and bones didn't lose too much mass while they were in space. 

Back home, Zhou Mi hated running, but here he found himself doing it more and more. While he ran he could empty his mind, in an almost meditative state while his body worked. He liked to run with headphones in, one of his small luxuries from home. 

He was in the gym, music pumping in his ears, when someone began running next to him. It took a while for Zhou Mi to register that it was Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun seemed to ignore his presence, except for a long side glance, before he picked up his pace, pushing himself ahead.

Zhou Mi didn't know why he did it, but he ran faster in response, until they were side by side again. This time, Zhou Mi caught the glare Kyuhyun sent him before he sped up.

And again, Zhou Mi followed, pushing himself until they were at the same pace. 

Zhou Mi's chest was heaving with the effort and so was Kyuhyun's, their backs soaked with sweat, drops rolling off their faces as they ran. 

It was in that moment when a song ended and there was silence, that he thought he heard Kyuhyun hissing something to him. He glanced over to find Kyuhyun stoney faced, eyes ahead, and Zhou Mi stumbled, losing his footing. He crashed to the ground, limbs flying as the circuit kept turning.

The track almost made a full circuit while Zhou Mi laid on his side, clutching an ankle, winded and dizzy, before Kyuhyun caught up. 

"Get up." Kyuhyun's tone was angry, so angry that for a moment Zhou Mi thought he was going to kick him. "Stop fucking around."

Zhou Mi pulled himself to his knees, attempting to get to his feet, before stumbling, his ankle giving way. Kyuhyun caught him and prevented him from falling ungracefully to the ground. 

He could hear Kyuhyun cursing him under his breath as he helped him hobble to the infirmary. Fortunately Joonmyeon was already there, and he hurried to the door to help Kyuhyun walk Zhou Mi to a bed. As soon as Zhou Mi was settled, Kyuhyun left without a word. 

Joonmyeon watched him leave, slightly confused, before asking Zhou Mi, "What happened?" 

"I fell in the gym," Zhou Mi said. "I think I sprained my ankle." Already it was looking bright red and swollen.

Joonmyeon clicked his tongue, pressing gently around the ankle as Zhou Mi held back his hisses of pain.

"Can you bear weight on it?" he asked, helping Zhou Mi to a standing position, gingerly testing it out. It fucking _hurt_ but he could stand on it.

"I don't think it's broken," Joonmyeon finally confirmed, heading to his supply cabinet to grab bandages and a cool pack. "You should be careful," he admonished as he gently settled the pack around Zhou Mi's ankle. Zhou Mi winced at the pressure, despite Joonmyeon's carefulness. "There's not that much I can do for serious injuries." 

"Sorry," Zhou Mi said, not even really knowing why he was apologising. 

"What's going on with you and Kyuhyun?" Joonmyeon asked, passing him a couple of painkillers. Zhou Mi suppressed a groan. Had everyone realised? 

"Nothing," Zhou Mi said as he swallowed the pills. Joonmyeon gave him a disbelieving look. "Really. Nothing. He just doesn't like me."

"But that's crazy. Everyone likes you!" Joonmyeon went to get another cold pack to replace the one around Zhou Mi's ankle. 

"That's nice of you to say, but not everyone does." Apart from Kyuhyun - for obvious reasons - Zhou M had the firm impression that Leeteuk wasn't fond of him. He was stern and curt with Zhou Mi, but his brusque manner evaporated when talking to the others. He was probably pissed off that Zhou Mi hadn't told him about his past history with Kyuhyun but he seemed to treat Kyuhyun normally. Zhou Mi was pretty sure he wasn't being paranoid. 

"You'll have to hang out with me for a few hours," Joonmyeon told him as he replaced the cold pack that had warmed up. "We'll keep your ankle iced and then I'll strap it up and you should be able to walk on it. But no running until it's fully recovered, okay?"

Zhou Mi agreed obediently, "Yes Doc." 

"You're all so clumsy, I'm forever putting you all back together," Joonmyeon grumbled. "The other day I had to bandage Kangin's hand."

"Really? Why?" 

"Ahhh…" Joonmyeon looked a little embarrassed. "I probably shouldn't have told you that!" Zhou Mi and Joonmyeon had developed a friendship during their time on Invenio, and Joonmyeon leaned in to whisper even though they were alone. "I think he had a fight with Leeteuk."

"He punched Leeteuk?" 

"No, no!" Joonmyeon flapped his hand. "He punched the wall. But I think it was because of Leeteuk. Such an idiot though, can you imagine how useful our main mechanic would be with a broken hand?" 

Injuries were a serious concern out here. With no access to specialised medical treatments beyond whatever Joonmyeon had brought with him, if anything major happened there was little that could be done. Some, like Zhou Mi, Leeteuk and Jia, had received some medical training in preparation for the trip but it was all shallow stuff. And if anything happened to Joonmyeon - they wouldn't be able to replace his knowledge or experience.

It was true for all their roles though. This was one of the huge risks of this mission, but there hadn't been room for two of each specialist. It was just something that they had to deal with.

While Jinri's death had been unfortunate, she had been one of the few whose duties were able to be picked up by the others. Jinri had been assigned to running and maintaining the life support systems, and it was lucky that the other engineers had been able to take up this duty. It was interesting, though not particularly surprising, to see how the relationships on board Invenio had developed. The engineers - Changmin, Kangin, Zitao, and Luna - had formed their own close-knit clique due to their common interests and work history. Meanwhile, those with scientific backgrounds - Zhou Mi, Kyuhyun, Ryeowook, Yesung, Qian, and Jia - were more fragmented. They were generally friendly towards one another but they weren't close in the way that the engineers were. 

The two pilots, Min and Soryong, stuck together. Not too surprisingly, even though Leeteuk also had a flight background, he was an outlier from their duo. There were also other outliers: Joonmyeon, Min, Fei, Liyin, and Amber who flitted between both groups. 

While Leeteuk liked to pretend that they were all a happy family, he couldn't change human nature. 

In the infirmary Zhou Mi hung out with Joonmyeon for a while, until Joonmyeon decided that he'd had enough of Zhou Mi's whining and jokingly kicked him out. 

"And I don't want to see you back here!" Joonmyeon added as Zhou Mi limped out of the infirmary back to his room.

The hours spent in Joonmyeon's company had cheered Zhou Mi up, but all that was immediately lost once he came across Kyuhyun in their shared lab. Zhou Mi winced at the noise he made when he entered, wishing he'd been more discreet rather than bumbling in like a bull as perhaps he could've snuck back out before he was noticed. Unfortunately, all the noise drew Kyuhyun's attention, who shot him a glare before he pulled headphones over his ears - a clear and obvious sign. 

Zhou Mi hoped to himself that this mission wouldn't be dependent on luck, as he seemed to have very little. 

Not that he blamed Kyuhyun. It _was_ all his fault.

 

*

 

In addition to nightly dinners, Leeteuk tried to promote a group bond by scheduling other activities together, one of which was a regular movie night. 

On the scheduled evening, he directed that the table in the mess be pushed and secured to the side of the room, and then they arranged the chairs in rows facing the wall on which the movie would be projected. Once he was satisfied with the arrangements, everyone took a seat. 

Leeteuk fiddled with the controls for a while and then the movie started. When the title screen came on, groans were heard around the room.

"Teuk, really?" Kangin said loudly. "This is the movie you want us to watch?"

"It's a classic!" Leeteuk protested. 

"It's also about 100 years old," Kangin argued. "And - we're IN space, why would we want to watch a movie about it?"

Leeteuk defended his movie choice. "I think it's good." 

"It's SO old." The argument waged for a little while, until Kangin gave up with a huff, slouching back in his chair.

Zhou Mi agreed with Kangin - 2001 Space Odyssey _was_ an interesting movie choice. Zhou Mi had seen it before, ages ago with Kyuhyun when they'd tried to make it through a list of classic space movies. They'd spent most of the time laughing at the plot holes and criticising the science rather than properly watching it (although to be fair, they did have to admit that it was pretty good for the time). They never made it to the end, falling asleep on their couch before the movie finished. He still had no idea how it ended, 

Kyuhyun was in the row in front of him, sitting with Changmin. They, like almost everyone in the room apart from Leeteuk, weren't paying attention to the movie, having an animated, hushed conversation. 

Fei, seated next to him, leaned over to whisper in Zhou Mi's ear, "Do you think Leeteuk would notice if we snuck out?" From her other side, Jia nodded, the two of them obviously already discussed it. 

Their Commander sat in the front, entirely engrossed in the movie. 

"We could try," Zhou Mi whispered back as he quietly stood up from his seat. Ryeowook noticed him standing, giving him a questioning look, and Zhou Mi raised his finger to his lips before motioning to the exit.

It started a chain reaction and soon most of them had quietly left the room without Leeteuk noticing. When they were safely out of earshot, Jia commented, "He's going to be mad when he finds out." 

"He should pick better movies then," Kangin scoffed as they all went their separate ways.

Jia was wrong though. Leeteuk wasn't mad. It was worse - he was _disappointed_. The following night after dinner, he gave them all a lecture about how he'd been so sad when he turned around to find everyone gone, and that he'd really hoped it would be a good bonding experience.

"You can't bond watching a movie anyway," Soryong piped up. 

Leeteuk tilted his head, thinking for a moment, and then he agreed. "You're right. I should think of better bonding activities." 

From next to Zhou Mi, Jia groaned quietly, aiming a kick at Soryong's shins. "Look what you've done," she mouthed, glaring at him.

"Maybe we should do an ice breaker," Leeteuk said after he'd mused over it for a while. "We went straight into training and never really got to know one another. We could do two truths and a lie? Everyone knows the rules, right? You think of two truths and one lie, and everyone has to guess what is true or false. Do you want me to start?"

Zhou Mi looked around the room. Everyone had expressions on their face that indicated how strongly they were biting their tongue. It appeared that they were going to go along with Leeteuk's idea. This was stupid. They were all intelligent adults, and they'd been on this ship together for over a month - they didn't need to do a silly ice breaker or have forced bonding time. 

"Is this really necessary?" Zhou Mi asked, when it became apparent no one else was going to speak up. 

Leeteuk blinked at him slowly, before asking, "You don't want to get to know your fellow crew members?" His voice was calm but there was a hardness in his eyes. Zhou Mi had a feeling that he didn't often get questioned, that people mostly just went along with what he said. 

"I just think that we know one another by now." Zhou Mi tried to temper his true thoughts. "And if we don't - well, we're adults. We can sort ourselves out." 

"Well," Leeteuk said, raising his eyebrow and letting out a little huff. "Everyone else is happy to play."

"Actually," Kangin interrupted. "I agree with Zhou Mi. I think it's stupid too." 

Zhou Mi wanted to screw himself up into a ball and slide under the table. He may have thought that it was stupid but he wasn't dumb enough to tell Leeteuk that to his face. Trust Kangin to unknowingly throw him under the bus. 

"Stupid?" Leeteuk parroted. "Right. Does everyone else agree?" There was murmurs around the table as everyone made their agreement known. "Fine then, I give up," Leeteuk told them all, annoyed but doing his best not to show it as he dismissed them. 

Zhou Mi could feel Leeteuk's glare on his back as he left. He hoped that Leeteuk wasn't someone who would hold a grudge. 

 

*

 

"ZHOU MI," Jia said loudly and disbelievingly, before leaning forward to slap him hard on the upper arm. 

Zhou Mi flinched, drawing back in an effort to protect himself. 

"You asshole!" 

"It was a long time ago!" Zhou Mi replied, in a sad attempt to defend himself. "And it was a mistake! Don't tell me you've never made one before." 

Jia rolled her eyes and slapped him again. "I've never broken up with someone by LEAVING THEM A NOTE. Zhou Mi, what the hell were you thinking? No wonder he hates you." 

Zhou Mi knew that he shouldn't have told her, but Jia was so persistent. By now it was obvious to almost everyone that there was something seriously wrong with the relationship between Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun, no matter how much Zhou Mi insisted that everything was okay. And once Jia got a wind of it - she wouldn't keep pestering Zhou Mi until he gave her the full story. Which he did, eventually, reluctantly. 

"If someone did that to me," Jia told him seriously. "I would cut his balls off." Zhou Mi winced at the imagery. And he believed her. Despite her small stature and pretty face, Jia was tough.

Though to be fair - they all were. There was no place onboard for anyone weak willed or fragile, but Jia was particularly forthright and unyielding. Zhou Mi really liked that about her.

"You're lucky in a way," Jia mused, setting off another simulation on her computer. They watched as it ran, noting how the explosion lit up the screen. Jia was their nuclear specialist, and she was running simulations of nuclear explosions. It would require a massive amount of energy to melt Kapteyn b's polar ice caps, that is if the planet had them as suspected, much more energy than they could generate, unless they found more nuclear material on surrounding planets or asteroids - but Jia was attempting to find that trigger point where a relatively small release of energy could trigger off a larger release of natural energy, to hasten the process. "He hates you now, but… maybe you'll have a chance in the future. That's more than any of the rest of us have." 

Zhou Mi wondered if Jia had left someone behind. Judging by the wistfulness on her face, something that passed by in a flash, he guessed that she had.

It was an unspoken rule amongst all of them that they didn't discuss the past or the people they'd left. And, except for the other night at dinner - when Zitao showed up red eyed - none of them showed all signs that there were people they'd left. But Zitao was the most tender hearted of them all. Joonmyeon confided in Zhou Mi later that Zitao was deeply homesick, missing his family and, Joonmyeon added quietly, someone who Zitao had described as the love of his life. 

Leeteuk had been present when Joonmyeon explained Zitao's behaviour, and he'd brushed it off dismissively. 

"The love of his life?" Leeteuk scoffed. "He's too young to have cared that much for someone. Besides, he gave them up - they can't have been that important." 

Zhou Mi however, didn't blame Zitao for being upset. Because Zhou Mi had also given up someone to pursue his dream, and he'd had four years to get over the pain. For the others, it had only felt like a couple of months. One would've been heartless to not have the occasional regret, no matter how much they all wanted to be here, no matter how much they believed in their mission.

Jia started off another simulation, and they watched as the screen lit up again. It was funny, Zhou Mi thought, that out of such destruction could come life. 

Jia scribbled something down in her notebook and Zhou Mi asked, "Was there someone for you? Back on Earth."

Jia paused in the middle of a sentence, raising her eyebrows at him, her expression surprisingly tolerant. "We all had someone, Mi. Families, partners, friends. We all left someone behind." 

I suppose we did, Zhou Mi thought.

"But yes," Jia continued, going back to her writing. "I had a boyfriend - we broke up when I signed up for his mission. And… for me it was less than a year ago - enough time that I still remember his face, his smile, the tone of his voice. But then I remember, I tell myself, that he's gone. And I wonder… did he get over me? How long did it take? Did he meet someone else? Have a family? Did he have a happy life and pass away quietly surrounded by people who loved him?"

"Jia…"

"Don't," she replied, pushing Zhou Mi's arms away and wiping at her face. She shook her head and forced out a smile. "It's just weird to think that I'll never know." 

Zhou Mi looked down at his hands, unsure what to say to her. 

"I don't regret coming. But that doesn't mean I don't regret leaving," Jia said. That was probably true for all of them. She started shutting down her computer, her experiments done for the day. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'm here now. We can only go forward - that's what you said, right?"

"Yes. Forward." Zhou Mi reached in for a quick hug before she could stop him and she punched him lightly after he released her. "And if it counts for anything, I think he had a long happy life. He had three kids - two boys and a girl. He named the girl after you, and she grew up to be the strongest, toughest girl ever." 

That gave Jia a small smile. "I hope so." 

Hope was all they had, because there would never be any way of knowing. 

"Anyway," Jia laughed weakly. "He was just a guy. Do you know that Soryong left his identical twin? I wonder if that felt like leaving a part of himself."

"I can't imagine it," Zhou Mi said, although honestly, the day he'd left Kyuhyun it had felt like leaving some of himself behind. Like he'd carved a part out, leaving it eternally hollow, always empty, a forever unsatisfied yearning. Zhou Mi imagined it would be 1000 times worse to leave your twin, someone who was your mirror. 

Jia gathered up her stuff, stacking everything neatly. "Come on, let's go see Ryeowook."

They left Jia's lab together, and headed over to see Ryeowook. Ryeowook was in charge of food production, and his room was the largest next to Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun's. Half of Ryeowook's lab was dedicated to growing edible plants, and the other half was dedicated to growing protein. Zhou Mi helped him a lot with the plants. While Zhou Mi's flora was for the purpose of oxygen creation and converting carbon dioxide on the new planet rather than eating, the gardening skills were transferable. 

Inside Ryeowook's lab, vegetables were grown in the air, in suspended plastic frames, rather than in soil. These aeroponic crops absorbed more minerals and vitamins than ones grown more conventionally, as well as taking up less space and requiring less water. The plants were being sprayed by an automatic mister when they entered, delivering a nutrient rich solution directly to the roots. 

The other part of the lab held the protein - basically lab grown animal flesh - which was grown in strips from stem cells acquired from their parent animal. Currently Ryeowook had beef and chicken growing, but also had samples of pork and lamb to grow later. There wasn't much yet, not enough to feed 19 of them, but soon enough there would be more. Zhou Mi was looking forward to eating something that wasn't rehydrated mush.

Ryeowook greeted them warmly when they entered, pulling off a couple of leaves from a lettuce plant and offering it to them. "I think the lettuce is ready to harvest. Want to try?"

Jia and Zhou Mi both grabbed it greedily - it had felt like ages since they'd last eaten something fresh and green. Even without any dressing or salt, Zhou Mi almost moaned in delight, the familiar crunchy texture and delicate flavour welcome after almost a month of mush. Who would've thought that he could be so excited to eat salad? 

"You are my favourite person," Zhou Mi told Ryeowook and Jia rolled her eyes at his obvious attempt to suck up. Ryeowook laughed but plucked off a couple more leaves for him. 

"Yeah, yeah, I know you're just using me for my food."

"And good looks and intelligence!" Zhou Mi said, stuffing more lettuce into his mouth. "When are you going to grow fruit?" 

Ryeowook had brought a large catalogue of seeds with him - a thick file, all neatly indexed and referenced. He'd let Zhou Mi flick through it once and Zhou Mi had been astonished with the range. 

"I can grow berries onboard, but larger items will have to wait until we arrive. You'll have to help me with that - we'll see what the soil is like." Zhou Mi looked forward to the challenge of adapting the flora to grow in Kapteyn b's conditions. 

"Hey Wook, have you -" Kyuhyun said as he entered, before pausing in the doorway when he caught sight of Zhou Mi. "Oh. Nevermind," he said quickly. "I'll ask you later."

"What did you do to him?' Ryeowook asked Zhou Mi after they watched Kyuhyun turn on his heel and leave. 

"I - nothing…"

"You should talk to him," Jia interrupted, giving Zhou Mi a shove towards the door. Zhou Mi let out a small whine in protest but Jia gave him such a stern look that he bit back what he was going to say. "Don't look at me like that. Go on." 

Zhou Mi scowled. Perhaps he didn't like her forceful personality as much as he thought. Jia softened. "Hey, you know you owe him an apology at least." 

Zhou Mi gave up, wanting to kill the conversation before she gave too much away. Already Ryeowook was looking very interested. "Okay, okay!" 

He left the room, finding Kyuhyun in their shared laboratory next door. Kyuhyun was hunched over, peering into one of the clear plant domes in the centre of the room, but he straightened when Zhou Mi entered.

"Wait," Zhou Mi said before he could leave, deliberately blocking the door. "Can we talk?" 

"We have nothing to talk about," Kyuhyun said, ice in his voice. "Excuse me, I have better things to do with my time." 

"Kyu, please… I just want to apologise."

"It's too late for that - you owed me an apology four years ago," Kyuhyun spat. "Of all the places, I can't believe we ended up here together. What the hell did I do to deserve this?" 

Zhou Mi had wondered about that. Had Kyuhyun known beforehand that Zhou Mi was part of this mission? Even after all this time, Kyuhyun could still read him, because he answered the unspoken question. "Fuck you, do you really think I signed up just for you? That I'd leave behind all my family and friends, just for a chance with you? How egotistical are you? This was my dream too! Or maybe you forgot that, just like you forgot me." 

Had he forgotten it? Somehow he'd convinced himself that it had been Kyuhyun holding him back, tethering him to Earth. The truth was, he'd loved Kyuhyun so much that it made him afraid, terrified that he was losing himself. His heart wanted two different things, and choosing one would mean losing the other. He woke up one day, feeling like he was suffocating. Ever since he was a child he'd had a firm, unwavering idea of who he wanted to be - what he wanted to achieve. Who was he if he wasn't that person? What would be left? There would be nothing. So he made his choice - walking out without an explanation, only leaving a note that said: _I'm sorry_

It was the cruelest thing he'd ever done in his life, but he hadn't known what else to do. If he'd talked to Kyuhyun, he would have broken.

"So it's too late for you to say sorry. I didn't join to follow you - I joined to leave you behind forever. So I could put my memories so deeply in the past that I could never go back." Kyuhyun let out a bitter laugh. "But that failed, didn't it? Now I'm going to be stuck with you for the rest of time. I'll never be free from you." Kyuhyun pushed his way past him, forcing Zhou Mi to let him out of the room. "You can take your apology and shove it. I'll never accept it."


	3. Vita

Kyuhyun was a stubborn man, but he'd never been an unreasonable one. 

He was - obviously - still angry, and that was to be expected. For some odd reason, after Kyuhyun stormed out on him, Zhou Mi felt a little… better. This Kyuhyun he knew, and he found some comfort in the familiarity. Kyuhyun got angry, lashed out, and then moved on. He had never been one for the silent treatment, for a passive-aggressive simmering anger. 

Kyuhyun may have been stubborn, but Zhou Mi may have been even more so. Just because he wouldn't accept Zhou Mi's apology, that didn't meant that Zhou Mi was going to stop trying. He had never actually shown Kyuhyun that he regretted it, he hadn't done anything beyond say a mere word, he hadn't put into actions how truly, sincerely, sorry he was. 

Zhou Mi hummed to himself as he selected a flower seed from his catalogue. He had a spot in the middle of his frame for this particular seed as it was one that had special meaning for him - and Kyuhyun. He was even using his limited amount of Earth soil for it. 

A couple of years after Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun had been together, they'd taken a trip to the mountains in western Sichuan - spending weeks trekking in these remote mountains located in south-west of China, bordering the Tibetan plateau. While there, they'd seen these beautiful flowers - Chinese alpine lilies - that looked a bit like orchids growing on tall stems. They had large delicate petals, ranging from shades of pink to white, and decorated with spattering of small dots. 

That trip had been memorable in more ways than one. They'd slept out in the open, tucked up in thick sleeping bags next to one another like burritos. Every night they'd laid on their backs, staring up the sky while they talked, watching the stars burning brightly. In such a remote place, so far from human settlement and light pollution, the night sky was incredible, packed tightly with stars and the bright coloured band of the Milky Way. 

Zhou Mi's grandmother once told him that to look at a star is to look into the past, across time. Due to the vast distances that light has to travel through our universe, one is literally seeing stars as they existed in the distant past - millions or even billions of years ago. And Kyuhyun had been as excited as Zhou Mi, had marvelled with him at the wonders and beauty of a sky filled with the sparkle of long dead stars. 

The flowers had become an emblem of sorts of that trip for Zhou Mi, a memory of a time when things had been natural and easy. They grew in the cool sub-alpine region, liking acidic soil, and were difficult to grow outside of these conditions. But Zhou Mi tended his carefully, planting the seed delicately and adjusting the acidity of the soil to mimic the flowers' natural environment as closely as possible. Occasionally, the rare occasions that Kyuhyun worked in the laboratory while Zhou Mi was there, he would catch Kyuhyun staring, although whenever he looked over Kyuhyun would look away. 

He wondered if Kyuhyun would remember the flowers or whether it was just some nostalgic thing that Zhou Mi had clung to. 

Several weeks after he'd planted the seed, Zhou Mi walked into the room to find Kyuhyun on Zhou Mi's side of the lab. He was in front of the plant wall, and when he noticed Zhou Mi's presence, jerked back, returning to his side of the lab without a word. 

But in the middle of the wall, the lily had bloomed - a single flower on a slim stem. It was a light rose pink, with darker pink dots dusted near the middle, and bright yellow pollen on maroon stems. 

Did Kyuhyun remember after all? Or was he just admiring it because it was new? Zhou Mi was tempted to ask, but Kyuhyun had gone back to his desk and pulled his headphones on. Even from the other side of the room, Zhou Mi could hear the music blasting out, a clear sign that Kyuhyun wasn't interested in talking. 

 

*

 

The sleeping quarters for all of the crew was made up of capsule pods, stacked side by side and two units high. Each crew member had their own allocated capsule, and they had the ability to close the door and draw a curtain to create their own private space. The capsules were small, slightly bigger than a normal single bed and used only for sleeping, although they did contain a reading light and a shelf to hold small personal items. Other personal items were held in lockers, located by the front door of the sleeping quarters. 

The capsules were cramped but relatively comfortable, however because they were so small it was important to keep them neat. Zhou Mi liked to fix up his bedding every morning - tucking the sheets back in tightly to the mattress, and folding the comforter neatly by the pillow, as well as putting his pyjamas back in his locker. 

Not everyone was so tidy. Kyuhyun was one of those - leaving his bed in total disarray. This was because he wasn't someone who woke up easily. No matter what time of the day, after first waking he would seem to sleepwalk to and fro for an hour until his brain caught up with his body. 

One morning Zhou Mi was alone in the sleeping quarters, the rest having headed off to breakfast. He was tidying his bed when he noticed that the door to Kyuhyun's capsule had been left open. The comforter was hanging out, preventing the door from being shut. Without thinking, he reached in and tidied it up, tucking the sheets back into the corners, and smoothing down the blankets. 

That evening when Kyuhyun went to bed, Zhou Mi was climbing into his capsule at the same time. His capsule was next to Kyuhyun's, and through the wall he heard a surprised, "Oh!" But it was a pleasantly surprised exclamation more than anything. 

The next morning, once Zhou Mi sorted out his capsule, he reached over again and did the same to Kyuhyun's, and from that day on it became part of his daily ritual. 

 

*

 

"The food isn't to your liking?" Joonmyeon asked as he took a seat next to Zhou Mi. It was breakfast time and Zhou Mi had been staring mournfully into his bowl, pushing what looked like gruel around from side to side with his spoon. "How's the ankle?" 

Zhou Mi set his bowl and spoon down, pushing it away from him. He wasn't hungry and it had cooled so much it resembled a thick white paste, pretty much inedible. "The ankle's fine," he replied, stretching it out under the table and rotating it in a slow circle. "Fully recovered." 

"Don't push yourself too hard," Joonmyeon warned, then said teasingly. "I know how clumsy you are. You could probably trip on air."

"Hey!" But the teasing put a smile on Zhou Mi's face, pulling im out of his melancholy. "What have you been working on?" he asked as Joonmyeon ate. He'd briefly mentioned in passing the other day that he was working on a project with Yesung, their genetic engineer. 

Joonmyeon looked around to make sure that they were alone before he said quietly, "We're working on longevity treatments. But don't tell anyone yet." Back on Earth, longevity treatments were common, but technology had only managed to extend a person's lifespan by an additional 20-30 years, the body's cells seemingly unable to replenish themselves past a certain amount of time. "Yesung seems to think we can vastly improve the treatment." 

"How do you know if it'll be successful though? Who are you going to experiment on?"

"Ahhh… Ryeowook is going to hate this, but… Yesung was talking of trying it on mice." 

"Ohhh." Now Zhou Mi understood why he had to keep it quiet. Yesung intended to create mice - actual, live mice - to use in his experiments. It wasn't as if they were going to be put through anything painful, but Ryeowook's stance was that they shouldn't create living animals to exploit for their own purposes. However, Zhou Mi, along with the others, took a more pragmatic stand. "I won't tell him." 

Zhou Mi left Joonmyeon to it, heading back to his lab. His own research was going well: the other day he'd managed to engineer a lichen that seemed to be doing well in a very cold, high carbon dioxide environment, that produced a high concentration of oxygen. He was excited to be getting back to it.

But when he walked in - everything was destroyed. All the work he'd spent the past couple of months on. The plants he'd been growing on the frames had been ripped out, every last one, and thrown on to the floor. His domes were smashed and broken. 

And his flower, his single, precious flower that he'd spent weeks nursing, had been uprooted and trampled on. 

Even his computer had been swept off the desk, in pieces on the ground. Zhou Mi was thankful that at least his notes and research had been backed up. He was paranoid about his data, after having a bad experience in university when he'd had to do an overnighter redoing an assignment after a file corrupted, and also backed up to two small external drives - one of which he locked away and one of which he carried with him. 

Looking at the wreckage made Zhou Mi want to weep. Who would do this? And why? 

Plus where was Kyuhyun?

 

* 

 

It was Jia and Fei who helped him clean up. When the two of them stopped by, Zhou Mi was crouching down trying to see if anything could be salvaged.

It couldn't. 

Zhou Mi felt a bit teary - even though he told himself it wasn't important, that he could start again. 

Fei disappeared to find a broom and dustpan, while Jia stayed behind, rubbing his shoulders in commiseration. 

"Why would anyone want to sabotage your work?"

Zhou Mi had no idea. He didn't think that he'd done anything for any of the crew to have a personal vendetta with him - with the exception of Kyuhyun. But Kyuhyun wouldn't do this, would he? He may have hated Zhou Mi, but he wasn't the type of person to destroy things. 

At least, when Zhou Mi had known him, he hadn't been. Who knew what kind of person he was now.

Fei returned, carrying cleaning up supplies, and to Zhou Mi's surprise she had Kyuhyun with her. 

"I told Kyuhyun what happened," she explained as she started to sweep the dirt into one pile. Kyuhyun didn't acknowledge Zhou Mi's presence, but he opened up a rubbish bag, picking up the plants and discarding them. Even as he got closer to Zhou Mi, who was still crouching on the floor staring at him in amazement, he ignored him and worked his way around him instead. 

It was Fei who made him move in the end. "Mi, can you stand up? You're in my way," she told him, waiting for him to move so she could sweep the floor where he was located. He got out of the way, deciding to start on the computer. He sighed - it was definitely beyond repair. 

Jia cleared the mess that had been made of his domes, gingerly picking up the large pieces of plastic and tossing them into another rubbish bag. "Can you recreate your domes?" she asked him, to which Zhou Mi shook his head. 

"They were the only ones I had." He sighed again. He could regrow his plants, but his experiments with different gas levels would have to cease. He hoped that the information he'd gained so far was enough to give him a head start when they finally arrived. 

"Do you have any idea who did this?" Kyuhyun asked, and Zhou Mi was shocked that the query was directed to him. It was the first time that Kyuhyun had spoken to him directly since the day Zhou Mi had tried to apologise. But even now, even though he had asked Zhou Mi a question, he didn't make eye contact, gaze firmly set on his task. 

"Um," Zhou Mi faltered, unsure how to talk to Kyuhyun when he'd been so intent on ignoring his presence. "No idea. I came back from breakfast and..." he waved his hands around. "It was like this."

"Did you see anything, Kyuhyun?" Fei asked. She had swept all the dirt into the dustpan and Kyuhyun held the mouth of the rubbish bag open so she could deposit it inside.

"No. I was at the gym." 

Could Kyuhyun be lying? Zhou Mi inspected him, noting that Kyuhyun's skin was flushed pink, his cheeks high in colour, the way one normally looked after a long run. But perhaps the redness was guilt, another part of Zhou Mi argued. 

"I wonder if anyone else had their labs ransacked," Jia mused. "Kyuhyun, was any of your stuff affected?"

They all looked over to Kyuhyun's side of the lab. Unlike Zhou Mi, he had a simple set up as most of his work was done on a computer, but he did have some equipment laid out. And it was all pristine and obviously untouched. Zhou Mi chewed on the inside of his cheek. What did this mean?

"We need to tell Leeteuk," Fei said. 

 

*

 

Leeteuk was pissed off when they told him. He paced up and down in the control room, barking out questions before coming to a stop. Zhou Mi was sitting down, and Leeteuk seemed to tower him over him as he stood. To Zhou Mi it felt like he was the one under interrogation - as if he was the person who'd done something wrong. 

"I don't know!" Zhou Mi said again in response to Leeteuk's last question, arms crossed as he sunk deeper into the chair. "I told you - I have no idea." 

"And you didn't see anything either, Kyuhyun?" Leeteuk asked, his tone kinder than when he'd been speaking to Zhou Mi. Zhou Mi frowned, unable to keep it off his face. Kyuhyun confirmed that he hadn't heard or seen anything suspicious, that, as mentioned previously, he'd been in the gym. 

Finally, Leeteuk dismissed them, but not before saying, "Don't discuss it with the others - I don't want to cause alarm when it could just be a misunderstanding." 

And that broke Zhou Mi's patience. "Misunderstanding!" Zhou Mi said, all but flying out of his chair in outrage. "It was sabotage. Everything was destroyed!"

Leeteuk gave him a level look. "That's what I heard you say." The implication was clear - he was basically accusing Zhou Mi of lying. Anger rose in Zhou Mi, so much rage that his vision was tinged red. 

"We saw it," Jia and Fei said together. Jia linked her arm into his, practically holding him back while he quivered in anger, resisting the very strong urge to punch Leeteuk in the face. 

"I saw the damage," Kyuhyun said calmly. "He's not exaggerating." Zhou Mi was so astonished that Kyuhyun was sticking up for him that he forgot how angry he was. 

"Oh. Well. Keep it to yourselves anyway until we get to the bottom of this." 

Zhou Mi filed out of the control room with Jia and Fei, Kyuhyun following behind. When they were out of earshot, all the words that Zhou Mi had held back exploded out. "Can you believe that? He basically accused me of lying! What the hell?"

Jia did her best to soothe him. "Let's go back to the lab. We'll help you get started again."

But Zhou Mi didn't want to start again - at least, not right now. Even though he appreciated Jia's effort, he needed some time before he could think about starting again. 

He grabbed a change of clothes from his locker and headed down to the gym, desperately needed to work out his anger and frustration. When he entered, he found it already occupied. Joonmyeon and Zitao were by the weight machines, Joonmyeon spotting while Zitao lifted. 

"Are you okay?" Joonmyeon asked as soon as he saw him, and even Zitao stopped as they both looked at him in concern. Zhou Mi's distress must've been blatantly obvious. "What happened?"

Zhou Mi flicked a glance at Zitao, unsure whether he wanted to discuss it with him in the room. Joonmyeon understood his hesitation.

"It's okay - Zitao's cool."

"You can tell me," Zitao agreed, sitting up and grabbing a towel to wipe himself off. "Or I can leave if you like." 

"No, sorry, it's okay." Zhou Mi came closer, sitting down on one of the weight machines near them. "Were either of you around the labs this morning?"

Joonmyeon shook his head in response, but Zitao replied, "Yeah, I went to see Qian." 

"Really?" Joonmyeon gave him a quizzical look. "I didn't know you were friends."

"She's nice…" Zitao said, a little defensively. "And we've been working on something together." He quickly changed the topic. "I'll tell you later. Why do you ask, Zhou Mi?"

"Did you see anything weird? Did you see anyone coming out of my lab?" 

Zitao took a swig of water while he thought, but eventually replied in the negative. "Sorry…" 

Zhou Mi knew that it was a long shot, but he still sighed quietly. "Nevermind." 

"Did something happen?"

"Nothing important," Zhou Mi lied. "Someone left me a surprise and I wondered who it was." He could tell from Joonmyeon's suspicious expression that he knew Zhou Mi was lying. 

"You seem pretty upset. Can't have been a very pleasant surprise." 

Zhou Mi just shrugged in response, seating himself properly on the weight machine to work his arms and back. He wondered if perhaps Zitao had been the one who'd damaged his work - he had just admitted to being around the labs that morning. He snuck a side glance to Zitao, who had swapped positions with Joonmyeon and was now spotting while Joonmyeon lifted. He seemed like a nice guy - he looked severe but his personality was the complete opposite - at least, that was how he came across. Could it be a lie? Was it him? Zhou Mi wasn't sure at this stage who he could trust. 

 

*

 

It took Zhou Mi a week to summon up the energy to restart his research. Every time he walked into the lab his heart had sunk seeing the empty spaces where there had once been greenery. The ship was fairly devoid of colour, most of the interior being grey or silver, and he had missed being in his space surrounded by green things he'd grown. 

He still hadn't tracked down the culprit, and was starting to think that he'd never know. Since no one else had reported any damage, and no one was treating him any different, he wondered if Leeteuk was right and it was just a misunderstanding. Maybe, he thought as he tried to justify to himself, it was just a prank gone wrong. Or a dare? 

Because the other alternative was that there was someone on board who hated him, and that wasn't something he wanted to think about. 

All his life, Zhou Mi had been someone likeable, affable enough to get along with everyone. He was smart, and attractive, and friendly - not someone that inspired a strong emotion like _hate_. Of course, the inverse was that he didn't evoke strong friendships either, happy to be that person who drifted in and out of people's lives casually. The kind of guy who people would think "Zhou Mi! He's nice!" and not much more. Part of that had been deliberate - he'd always had his goal foremost in his mind, always believed that he would leave Earth one day, and getting close to people would just mean heartache. He'd been successful for much of his life, and then - 

He met Kyuhyun. 

They first met at an undergraduate biology class, and their relationship progressed so naturally that by the time Zhou Mi realised he'd made an attachment he'd never wanted to make, it was too late. There was no big build up: Kyuhyun asked Zhou Mi if wanted to grab a coffee after class one day, and it started from there. They studied together, laughed together, and one day they kissed and it came so easily that Zhou Mi didn't think anything of it. 

Neither were each other's first relationships, and Zhou Mi just assumed that Kyuhyun would be like the other boys he'd dated - something to pass the time until he could leave. But Kyuhyun was Zhou Mi's equal in every way, and where others had been unable, he managed to find all the parts of Zhou Mi that made him tick. And he moulded himself to them, but what's worse - he moulded Zhou Mi to him. 

They finished university, completed their graduate studies in their different branches. They moved in together, spent hours and hours watching the stars and talking about the universe and that part of Zhou Mi who'd always wanted to leave the planet was quiet for a while. 

Zhou Mi's epiphany came from the smallest of things. He'd been doing the dishes after dinner, gloved hands deep in the sink of soapy water. Kyuhyun was sorting laundry, and he entered the room to tell Zhou Mi that the sock monster had eaten another sock. Zhou Mi flicked suds at him, chasing him out, and Zhou Mi watched him run out, fondness and affection and love making his chest tight. 

And then he suddenly thought: what am I doing? What am i doing _here_ in this apartment, talking about socks and doing dishes. Who have I become?

But the worst thought, the one that frightened him so much he could feel it like spiders walking along his skin: who will I be if I stay?

The thoughts were like bile in his throat. No matter how much he tried to swallow them down, they kept rising, burning him, disgusting and acidic. 

Zhou Mi finished the dishes, pulled the plug out of the sink and watched the water drain away, leaving the soapy residue around the sinkhole.

The following morning he found a piece of paper, on which he wrote two words. He placed his apartment keys next to them, and then he walked out the door and never came back. 

He spent three years not thinking about Kyuhyun, not thinking about what he'd done, spent that time attempting to move on. He did more research, trained hard, applied for every single space mission he could and was rejected from all of them. 

When he heard about a crazy, insane, space voyage, one in which there would be no coming back from, one in which he would have to leave everyone and everything he knew behind - he told himself that he wasn't interested because he was still trying to run away from Kyuhyun. 

Sometimes Zhou Mi was good at lying to himself.

Zhou Mi walked into his lab that morning, ready to finally put it behind him. He had grand plans - today he was going to replant everything. He was going to fill that wall with greenery again. And he'd soldier on. His domes were destroyed, but he could run computer simulations of flora in different atmospheric conditions (fortunately Qian had enough parts to rebuild his computer), so that would have to do. 

What he saw stopped him short. And just like a week ago, when he'd walked in to find everything destroyed, his heart clenched. Except this was different. He couldn't believe what he was seeing, didn't trust his eyes. He had to walk closer just to confirm that it wasn't a mirage. 

In the middle of the wall a single, green sprout was growing, standing out starkly against the otherwise empty wall. 

 

*

 

Jia leaned in to inspect the seedling. "It's cute." 

"Cute?" Zhou Mi didn't think Jia totally understood the situation. "It's not cute. Where did it come from?"

Jia shrugged. "I don't know. You're the plant expert. Could it have grown back by itself?"

Zhou Mi shook his head. There was no way, not with the way everything had been uprooted and the dirt thrown out. 

"So someone planted it? And didn't tell you?" Jia wrinkled her nose a little. "Okay that is a bit weird." She blinked, thinking hard, and then said, "Who could it have been? There's only a few people who know about what happened. It definitely wasn't me, and I doubt it was Fei. She can't grow anything to save her life."

Zhou Mi added, "And it can't have been Leeteuk or Kyuhyun." They both disliked Zhou Mi so strongly that Zhou Mi knew that neither of them would have gone to the effort. 

Jia gently stroked the single leaf on the sprout with the tip of her little finger. "Then the person who did all the damage?"

"But that doesn't make any sense. Why would they destroy everything and then come back to do this?" 

"Maybe they felt sorry for what they did? They're repenting or something?" 

Zhou Mi chewed on his lip, staring at the seedling.

If someone was trying to drive him crazy, they were off to a good start. 

 

*

 

That wasn't the only surprise Zhou Mi found in his lab. The following day, he entered his lab to find a new dome sitting on the bench in the middle of the room. There was no note or anything to indicate who had left it there. 

However, there was only one person onboard who had the ability to produce it - Qian, their manufacturing scientist. 

Zhou Mi went to visit her in her workshop. She was one of the few who had her own as she needed the additional space for the large machines that she used in her work. Zhou Mi knocked on the door and poked his head in. 

Qian was hunched over one of her machines, safety googles on. She turned it off when Zhou Mi came in, pushing the googles to the top of her head and greeted him warmly.

"Sorry? Am I interrupting?"

"It's fine." She waved him in. "I'm just recycling our food wrappers."

"I just wanted to say thank you for the dome," he said, already convinced that Qian was the one who'd made it. 

"Oh! Did he tell you? And here he told me to keep it a secret." She smiled at him cutely. "But you're welcome. He didn't say what happened to your other ones but I hope my replacement is okay." 

He? Zhou Mi had his first clue. He wondered how much information he could fish from her. 

"I can manufacture you some more - just let me know the dimensions you're after." 

"I hope you didn't go to a lot of trouble. I feel bad that he asked you to replace my dome."

"No, it's fine! That's what I'm here for - we're all in this together, right? Tell Kyuhyun that I'm sorry it took me so long to get to his request. He asked me a whole week ago, but I've been busy working on an idea that Zitao had."

Wait. It was Kyuhyun? Zhou Mi blinked, completely astonished and unsure how to take this news. It was a miracle that Qian didn't notice - caught up describing the way it was manufactured. Zhou Mi made noises at the appropriate times but his mind was almost blank. What was Kyuhyun up to? 

 

*

 

Zhou Mi didn't confront Kyuhyun straight away. He played dumb, not even telling Jia about his conversation with Qian. 

The day Jia and Zhou Mi spent doing the replanting, Kyuhyun happened to be in the lab. Zhou Mi was surprised that he didn't leave, as he normally did. Kyuhyun stayed on his side of the room, busy on his computer, headphones placed firmly over his ears. Zhou Mi left him alone, but he did notice that Kyuhyun kept giving them the occasional side glance. 

Even Jia noticed, sashaying over and tugging the headphones off Kyuhyun's head. "Want to help?" she asked shamelessly. "It'll take less time with the three of us." 

Despite Zhou Mi's alarmed cries of _"no, don't worry, we can do it ourselves"_ Kyuhyun finished whatever he'd been working on and actually came over to help. 

Zhou Mi narrowed his eyes at Jia, who merely looked both smug and faux-innocent at the same time in response. 

"Don't," he whispered to her as he passed her some seeds to place in the bottom pot. 

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, sticking her tongue out at him briefly as she gently placed the seeds into an indentation in the soil, covering them with dirt. "Hey Kyuhyun," she said more loudly. "Why don't you and Mi work on the top row? It's too high for me." 

Zhou Mi hip checked her in retaliation for her unsubtle attempts to get Kyuhyun and him working together. It practically sent her flying off her feet. She paid him back later when she punched him in the shoulder, giving him a numb arm for an hour, but it was worth it. 

With the three of them working together, it took a couple of hours to get all the seeds in. It would have gone faster if Zhou Mi hadn't needed to constantly stop Jia and Kyuhyun each time they planted so he could note the type of soil and the type of seed that had gone in. He was meticulous, even going as far as weighing out the amount of soil in each pot before he'd let Jia and Kyuhyun plant. 

"You are SO boring," Jia complained. "So anal retentive. It's the last oneeee, let's just get it in."

"It's important," Zhou Mi said mildly, double checking the weight on the scale. "Everything needs to be exact. You should know that - you can't just wing nuclear reactions either." 

Jia huffed a little. "That's different. You're just playing with plants." 

But support came from an unlikely quarter. "It is important," Kyuhyun agreed quietly. Then he dusted his hands. "You two can finish without me?" 

"Yes, of course," Zhou Mi quickly said, a bit flustered. "Thanks for your help." Kyuhyun ignored him, heading back to his side of the room. 

Zhou Mi didn't know what to think anymore. One minute Kyuhyun was - not warm, exactly, but civil - and the next he was freezing cold. He was interrupted in his thoughts by Jia. 

"Hurry up! How long does it take to weigh dirt? I'm going to let you do your own work next time."

"I didn't ask for your help," Zhou Mi complained, tenderly patting the soil over the last seed, before using his finger to draw a streak of dirt down Jia's cheek. "But thanks." 

Jia shrieked, giving him a shove, yelling, "I'm going to kill you!" before grabbing him in a headlock. Zhou Mi couldn't stop laughing, squirming as he tried to get loose, until he looked up and met Kyuhyun's eyes - black and empty. It instantly sobered him up, and he stiffened, Jia letting him go when she felt his change in mood. 

"Let's clean up," he told her, smile completely wiped off his face, and they tidied everything away in silence. 

 

*

 

"Uh oh."

There was shouting a few doors down - loud, angry shouting. Jia and Zhou Mi shared a glance, wordlessly asking one another if they should just ignore it, before Zhou Mi sighed heavily. 

"I recognise that voice - it's Ryeowook. We better go see what's going on."

They left Jia's lab, heading down the corridor toward the screaming. It was coming from Yesung's room and sure enough, when they entered, they found the shouting originating from Ryeowook. Yesung was just standing there, arms crossed, waiting until Ryeowook finished, looking unimpressed.

"Guys?" 

Jia's tentative question finally shut Ryeowook up. He took a deep breath, chest heaving as he obviously did his best to calm down.

"What's going on?" Zhou Mi asked. "Did something happen?"

"Did you know -" Ryeowook started as Yesung dramatically rolled his eyes. "That this guy made mice?"

Zhou Mi did his best not to choke. Crap, Ryeowook had found out. "Mice?"

"Yes. And do you want to know why?" 

Zhou Mi already knew, and he knew the exact reason Ryeowook was so pissed off, but he played dumb. "Umm, why?"

"He's experimenting on them!" 

"I'm not harming them," Yesung said, rather patiently considering the circumstances, since Ryeowook had basically accused him of being a monster, an evil, awful person before Jia and Zhou Mi walked into the room. "They'll get to live a normal life - I'll take good care of them. It's just that some may live for a bit longer than others." 

"That's NOT the point. It's not about harm, it's about exploitation. You're exploiting them." 

Yesung rolled his eyes to the ceiling, taking a deep breath and exhaling heavily. "That's your viewpoint." 

Yesung's casual dismissal just about set Ryeowook off again, and Zhou Mi had to get in between them. "Hey, hey, guys, just stop. Wook, this isn't achieving anything." 

"Yeah," Yesung said. "What do you want me to do now? Kill them because you don't agree with what I'm doing? Would that ease your mind?"

Flustered, Ryeowook cried, "No! I -" He shoved at Yesung angrily. "You're being deliberately obtuse." 

"I'm not. I'm being pragmatic. I understand your position - I truly do. But it's not mine. I believe that what I'm doing is necessary and justifiable, and just as I won't be able to change your mind, you won't be able to change mine." 

"Fine," Ryeowook spat at him. "But I won't be a part of it. I won't take your treatment, not if you've tested it on animals." 

"Wook…" Zhou Mi tried, "Come on." 

"No." Ryeowook was adamant. "That's my stance and I'm entitled to it. I don't care if that means I'll die sooner than the rest of you." He stormed out.

"Well, that was awkward," Yesung said to them dryly. "Thanks for trying to help. It's pointless though - we'll never agree on this." 

"How did he even find out?" Zhou Mi and Jia followed Yesung over to a cabinet located on the far wall. Yesung opened it to reveal the mice. There were four - small little white things, in individual cages. 

"I don't know," Yesung said. "I keep them hidden, and only a few people know about them." He reached for a bag of seed to refill the feeders and the mice squeaked happily. "Hey guys." 

"They're cute." 

Yesung replenished the water trays before closing the door to the cabinet. "I'm not a monster - really. I'm not going to hurt them. They're not going to suffer." 

"We know," Jia replied for both of them. 

Yesung shook his head. "If we find life on Kapteyn b, he's doing to flip his lid."

Zhou Mi wondered about that remark. "Oh?"

"You know, with all the discussion about terraforming. If there's life, he won't be happy if we try to change anything." 

Terraforming Kapteyn b to mimic the conditions of Earth would mean success for the crew of Invenio - but it would probably also mean the end of any existing life on the planet. Zhou Mi felt a little uneasy. He was almost 100% certain that there was no intelligent life on Kapteyn b, but what if there was lesser forms? How staunch were Ryeowook's principles? If it turned out there was only bacteria - would he still be against it? 

"I thought - that was the purpose of this mission? Why else are we here?" Zhou Mi asked, a little confused. Why else would he be on board the ship, himself and Kyuhyun?

"What?" Now it was Yesung's turn to be confused. "You didn't know that there's two camps?"

"No? Who?" 

Yesung shrugged. "To be honest, I don't know exactly where everyone stands. But I'm pretty sure Ryeowook doesn't believe in the concept, and there's definitely a few others. Though I know where you two stand. With your previous work, Zhou Mi, that much is obvious."

Zhou Mi was surprised that Yesung knew of his published work. He'd written articles and theoretical studies on terraforming. 

Yesung continued, "Leeteuk tries to make out that we're a family, but we can't forget that we're not. Just watch out for yourself, Mi. You too, Jia. Not everyone on board this ship agrees with what you do."

Zhou Mi wasn't sure if that sounded like a threat or a warning. 

 

*

 

"Zhou Mi," Fei said with exasperation as she took the knife from him. "Did you never cook back home?"

Ryeowook's food production had stepped up enough that they were now able to supplement their meals with fresh vegetables and lab grown meat. Everyone had been paired up and rostered on cooking duty, with Zhou Mi being partnered with Fei.

Unfortunately for Fei, Zhou Mi's cooking abilities were worst than poor. Back on Earth he'd eaten a lot of prepared meals. He could peel potatoes but that was about the extent of his skills. Fei looked forlornly at the vegetables that Zhou Mi had pretty much massacred before she pushed him aside. 

"Why don't you heat the pan for me?" she suggested. They were preparing something simple: pan fried beef, that had been grown by Ryeowook, and vegetables. 

Under Fei's guidance, they managed to produce something edible and they had just finished serving up their dish to the crew when Leeteuk called for everyone's attention, tapping his spoon loudly on a glass. 

Leeteuk started off by thanking Fei and Zhou Mi for cooking, and then said, "As you may have noticed, we're not far from Kapteyn b." Everyone gave a cheer - it had been six months on board Invenio, and in the past couple of days the new planet had come in sight. Initially it was just a tiny blip, barely able to be seen, but it was steadily growing larger and larger as they neared. 

In the next couple of days - they would arrive. 

Over the past week Leeteuk had been working with Min, their flight engineer, to adjust the engine's thrusts to decelerate the ship as it neared, changing their flight path to match the Kapteyn b's orbit. 

The intention was to settle into orbit around the planet and then send down a small exploratory contingent. Zhou Mi was included in this contingent, so he could assist with taking measurements. He was excited. This was what he had spent so much time dreaming about and training for. Even though they had an idea, through observations, of the conditions on Kapteyn b, no one knew exactly for sure what they would be greeted with. Would there be pre-existing life? Would be there oxygen? What was the atmosphere like? Could they live there or would they be fated to spend the rest of their days on this spaceship? There were many questions to be answered. 

"It's been a really long journey," Leeteuk was saying, "And I just want to say thank you, and I'm proud of you all. Soon we'll be at our new home and the real work will begin." He smiled widely, dimple showing, setting out a box that he opened to reveal several bottles of champagne. 

Someone laughed. "You've been holding out on us!" Kangin shouted as whoops went around the table. "You had alcohol all this time!" He lunged against the table, making a pretence out of grabbing it, Leeteuk pushing him away. 

"Settle children," Leeteuk admonished fondly, uncorking the bottle with a soft pop. He poured into glasses and Zhou Mi helped him open the other bottles. When everyone had a glass, Leeteuk held his up in a toast. 

"To us. To Invenio. To Kapteyn b."

The crew held up their glasses too. "To Kapteyn b."

"We go forward." 

"We go forward," they chorused. 

 

*

As Zhou Mi rounded the corridor, an object propelled itself into his shins. 

"Ow!" he exclaimed in surprise, leaning down to rub his shinbone. He picked up the object - a palm sized robot that looked a little like a bug, skittering around on four double jointed legs. On the front of its head was a singular round eye, that Zhou Mi assumed contained a camera. 

"Sorry!" Zitao shouted, running towards him, a controller in his hands. "Did it hurt you?" 

The robot only had struck Zhou Mi lightly, so while it had stung it hadn't hurt too much. "Did you make this?" 

"Uh huh," Zitao beamed. "Do you like it?" Zitao was in charge of robotics, and the few occasions Zhou Mi had poked his head into Zitao's workshop he'd noticed all manners of odd creations littering the floor. 

Zhou Mi turned the robot over to inspect its underside. The legs kept wriggling and Zhou Mi noticed that the two front limbs held sharp drill bits that retracted up into the legs.. "Can you program it? Or does it only work by remote control?" Already Zhou Mi was turning over potential applications in his head, how it could come in useful when they reached Kapteyn b. 

Zitao practically rolled his eyes at him, like he'd asked the dumbest question in the world. "Of course I can program it. I'm just playing around with this one - I just built it. Do you want to see some more? Come with me." 

Zhou Mi placed the robot back on the ground and walked with Zitao back to his workshop. "How long does it take you to build something?"

The robot's feet clattered on the ground as it wandered ahead of them. "It depends on the complexity. This one took an hour, but it's pretty simple." They entered his workshop, Zitao apologising for the mess. 

Unlike the labs, Zitao's room was definitely a workshop, filled with tools and metal parts and odds and ends. He shared it with Amber, their mining expert, but her part of the room was pristine. To be fair, there wasn't much for Amber to do while they were in flight, so all of her mining equipment was still neatly packed away. 

A large blueprint was tacked up on one of the walls. It appeared to be a huge mining robot,about 20 stories high judging by the scale. 

"Wow," Zhou Mi said as he inspected it. It was very detailed, even down to the types of bolts that were to be used. Zitao turned his bug robot off and joined him to look at the blueprint. "Do you actually have the materials to build this?" Zhou Mi asked him. Surely they didn't have enough metal to construct something of that size.

"Not yet!" Zitao said perkily. "But Amber thinks we can find it easily enough. If not on Kapteyn b, on other nearby planets, on asteroids - or maybe even a moon." He left Zhou Mi's side to rummage around in a large cabinet. "Do you want a robot to play with?" he asked, pulling out something that looked like a metal dragonfly. 

Zitao showed Zhou Mi how the robot worked, speaking faster and faster in his excitement. 

"Oh! One last thing!" Zitao said as he finished the robot tutorial. He flicked a switch on the controller and the back of the robot lit up, flashing a soft glowing green. "Like a firefly." He handed the controller over to Zhou Mi and threw the robot up in the air, where it hovered. 

"This is really cool," Zhou Mi told him, making the robot fly around the room, and Zitao blushed a little, but smiled happily. 

"No one else thinks they're cool - everyone thinks I'm a bit weird and childish, that I'm playing with toys while everyone else is doing proper work." Zitao frowned, teeth working at his lower lip in frustration. 

They weren't particularly close, although Zitao and Joonmyeon seemed to have fallen into a close friendship, and Jia also seemed to like the younger man. This was really the first time he'd spent any decent time with Zitao alone. From what Zhou Mi could tell, he had strong moods - strongly up, or strongly down - and not much in between. He remembered the last time he'd seen Zitao in a deep melancholy.

"How's the homesickness?" Zhou Mi asked gently. 

"What homesickness?" Zitao asked quickly. He was a terrible liar. "You probably think it's stupid," he said self-deprecatingly. 

"I don't." 

Zitao eyed him, as if trying to gauge how serious he was, whether he was lying. Apparently satisfied that Zhou Mi was being genuine, he said, "Jia told me that you knew Kyuhyun - before." Zitao plucked the robot out of the air, turning the light off, before handing it back to Zhou Mi. "But you two don't talk. Did you not like one another back on Earth?"

"It's complicated," was the best Zhou Mi could give, even though it wasn't complicated - not really. 

Zitao didn't pry, instead going over to close and lock his cabinet. "Well, we're all complicated here," he said instead, eyes dark and Zhou Mi wondered exactly what he meant.

 

*

 

It was only later that he figured out what Zitao was trying to say. 

Zhou Mi was in his pod, trying to sleep. For some reason he had taken the robot into the pod with him, and he flicked the switch to turn the glow on. The light flickered softly and as he watched it, he had a revelation. 

They _were_ all complicated. Who leaves their entire planet to travel 150 years to a corner of the universe where there was no guarantee of finding other life? 

Zhou Mi knew why he was here. He thought he knew why Kyuhyun was here. But why were the others here? Were they deliberately leaving something behind or were they - like Zhou Mi - searching for something else?


	4. Kapteyn b

The morning they entered Kapteyn b's orbit, everyone gathered in the control room for the occasion. 

Kapteyn b was huge, five times as large as Earth had been, and it had gradually been growing in their view from Invenio's windows for over a month, until they were close enough to realise exactly how enormous this planet was. It loomed large in the darkness, and the crew were ecstatic to see that the planet appeared to have vast liquid seas, which they all hoped were made of water rather than nitrogen or methane. Kapteyn b's land was dark brown tinged with red, and her oceans were a dusty grey, most likely due to a thin atmosphere. 

Where Earth had been a stunning green and blue sphere hanging in the blackness of the Milky Way, in comparison Kapteyn b seemed drab, but excitement still rippled through the crew. And Zhou Mi thought she had her own beauty - something understated but with untapped potential. 

After the longest journey, they had finally arrived, and it seemed like an anticlimax when Min turned around to confirm that they were successful in entering orbit. As Invenio circled the planet, the exploratory crew made their way to the bottom deck to suit up. 

Initially, only a few of them would head down to the surface to could scope out conditions on the planet and decide on the next steps to take. Zhou Mi was amongst the four selected, along with Kyuhyun, Leeteuk, Amber, and Min, who would be flying the landing module. The rest were to stay behind on Invenio, although they would still be in radio contact. 

Joonmyeon and Fei accompanied the five down to the bottom deck to assist with them with suiting up. Unlike the tedious process in the past, where it would take upwards of an hour for an astronaut to be fitted, they now had suits that were lightweight and stretchy. These new suits were lined with small coils, and when plugged into a power supply, the coils would contract to wrap the garment tightly around the wearer's body, like a second skin. They were much easier to move in than conventional suits, which were incredibly bulky.

The spacesuits were completed with boots, gloves, a clear domed helmet which contained a communications headset, and - once they landed on the surface - they would put on flat backpacks that contained their oxygen. They also had toolbelts that fit snugly around their waists containing instruments specific to their area of study, as well as more general items such as a torch, flares, and pens. 

All suited up, the group moved into the spaceplane. Unlike Invenio, this craft was shaped more like a conventional airplane and although it was small in comparison to the mother ship, it still measured 24m in length, with a wingspan of over 10m, and could take up to six passengers at a time. The craft was reusable, designed to be landed horizontally like a regular airplane, and flown back up to Invenio after each trip. 

Once suited up, everyone buckled into their assigned seats. Min and Leeteuk completed the flight check, and after a countdown - _5... 4... 3... 2... 1…_ they were released from Invenio, aerobraking to deorbit, before flying through the planet's thin atmosphere to the surface of Kapteyn b. 

Min and Leeteuk had identified a landing site prior to departure, and as they descended Min called out their altitude and velocity, while Leeteuk took over semi-automatic control of the flight. 

"Brace yourself," Leeteuk warned. "It's going to be bumpy," They held on to their harnesses tightly as Leeteuk touched down on the surface. Without an artificially flattened landing strip, it was indeed a jarring landing, jolting them in their seats as he brought the plane to a gradual stop. 

"Are we clear?" Leeteuk asked Min, who replied in the affirmative. They could see Leeteuk grin. "Then let's go." 

The door lock was released and opened. Leeteuk was the first out, and Zhou Mi was second - the second person to _ever_ step foot on the new planet. It should have been a momentous occasion, but they had work to do, and there was no time to celebrate. 

Kapteyn b's gravity was slightly different than Earth, a little lower at approximately 65%, and it took him a few steps of stepping around awkwardly before he was able to compensate for the difference. Once he became more familiar with it, he walked a small distance from the others, bouncing slightly as he went. Zhou Mi crouched down so he could lower his gloved hand to the surface. He lifted his hand, watching as the dirt drifted back down. 

Inside he was shouting in excitement: dirt! It wasn't just rock, Kapteyn b had dirt: thin and dusty, but still dirt. Zhou Mi unhooked a small shovel and a jar from his toolbar so he could take a sample back to the main ship to analyse. 

In the near distance was a small lake, simmering in the dim sunlight. Zhou Mi walked that way, long bouncing steps, to take a liquid sample, hoping that it would be H2O and not something like methane or ethane. 

Through the communications headset, Zhou Mi heard Kyuhyun let out a whoop. He had wandered off to his own patch, no doubt taking his own samples and doing his own testing.

"What is it, Kyuhyun?" Leeteuk asked. 

"There's carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water vapor and…" he made a dramatic pause, "Oxygen." The excitement was evident in his voice. 

"Percentage?" they heard Joonmyun ask through the radio. It was a good question. Just the presence of oxygen wasn't enough. On Earth, oxygen accounted for about 21% of the air, and although people could survive at slightly lower concentrations, there wasn't much leeway. 

They had to wait until Kyuhyun's instrument completed its assessment. "15.5%" he finally confirmed.

That was low. At a concentration of 15.5%, a person's heartbeat was accelerated, and thinking and coordination was impaired. They would be able to survive breathing the air for a short moment, but long term exposure would mean death. Even so, it was an exciting discovery, opening up possibilities for their future settlement. 

They spent several hours on the surface with their individual activities, before it was time to head back to the main ship. 

At dinner that night, all discussion was about the future. 

"And," Changmin was asking, "The air is breathable? There's nothing toxic in it?"

Kyuhyun agreed. "Not as far as I can tell. I need to run some more tests, but it's potentially breathable for short periods of time." 

"And the temperature?"

"It's cold," Zhou Mi confirmed. Kapteyn b's sun was smaller than Earth's sun, and with the planet's thin atmosphere, any heat was quickly radiated off the planet. "Not freezing, but cold." 

"As we flew over," Jia told them all, "I noticed ice caps." Zhou Mi knew what she was suggesting. Ice caps meant water, and potentially - a lot of stored oxygen and carbon dioxide. They would have to test it first, however, melting the ice caps could release a large load of CO2 into the atmosphere. The idea would be to start off a runaway greenhouse effect, which would thicken the atmosphere and warm the planet. 

"So it's a good candidate for terraforming?" Luna asked. And the mention of the T word had everyone talking at once.

"Hey! HEY!" Leeteuk interrupted with a shout, before saying more quietly, "Calm down everyone. It's too soon to talk about that."

"That's true," Zhou Mi agreed. "We need to do a lot more research first, take more readings of the existing condition." But he couldn't help himself, and he smiled as he said, "But it is a good candidate." 

The room erupted as 19 people tried to talk at once. 

 

*

 

"Why do you do that?" Leeteuk asked as he entered Zhou Mi's lab. Dinner had finished a couple of hours ago but Zhou Mi was too keyed up to sleep. Instead he made a start on analyzing the soil and water samples he'd collected from the planet. 

At Zhou Mi's innocent "what?" Leeteuk scowled as he made his way over to Zhou Mi's desk. Zhou Mi lifted his eye from the microscope and waited. This was the first time Leeteuk had visited him in his lab, and he had a feeling it wasn't going to be a positive experience.

"Defy me. Undermine me. _I'm_ the Commander."

Zhou Mi truly had no idea what he was talking about. He had no idea where this was coming from.

"Back then at dinner! I told everyone that it was too soon to talk about terraforming, but you just _had_ to have the last word, didn't you?"

Oh, Leeteuk had been offended about _that_? It seemed like such an innocuous thing to be annoyed about. "But… I agreed with you? I didn't mean to undermine you - that wasn't my intention. It is a good candidate though, and I wasn't going to -"

Leeteuk slammed his hands down on the desk, leaning over so close that he was practically pressing his nose to Zhou Mi's. "Just stop. Remember that I'm the Commander, and it will be a good candidate when I say it is. Got it?"

From the doorway they heard Kyuhyun clearing his throat. "What's going on?"

Leeteuk was suddenly all smiles as he pulled himself away from Zhou Mi. "Just reminding Zhou Mi of his place. Go to bed you two, it'll be another big day tomorrow." They both watched him walk out.

"Does he hate you as much as he hates me?" Zhou Mi mused out loud. It was a rhetorical question - he wasn't expecting Kyuhyun to answer, not when they still hadn't spoken more than a couple of sentences together. 

But Kyuhyun did reply, to Zhou Mi's surprise. "Probably not." He walked over, taking a seat on the stool next to Zhou Mi, picking up a beaker that contained a liquid sample from Kapteyn b, holding it up to the light.

Zhou Mi blinked - both at the honest response and Kyuhyun's close presence. "Why… why does he hate me so much?" he asked tentatively. 

Kyuhyun responded with a non-sequitur. "You're always so sure of yourself, aren't you? When you make a decision, you'll follow that path to the end. Just like an arrow - you fly straight and true." 

"I… okay?"

"That's hard for others - for those who don't have the same clarity, the same purpose. For people who doubt themselves and their ideals, it can be difficult to face those without any self doubt." He swirled the liquid briefly before placing the beaker carefully back on the desk. 

"I have self doubt," Zhou Mi said quietly. 

Kyuhyun looked him in the eyes, the first time they'd made eye contact in a long time. Zhou Mi remembered when he used to look at him with love and affection, and then when that changed to hatred. But today, Kyuhyun's gaze was merely quizzical. "Do you?" he said simply. 

Zhou Mi bit his lower lip, unnerved by this conversation, by Kyuhyun's closeness. "Don't we all?" 

Kyuhyun shrugged, then stood up. "I'll give you the full analysis of the atmosphere when I've completed it. Let me know about the results of the soil and water." 

Zhou Mi stared after him as he left. And again, he asked himself, what was Kyuhyun up to?

 

*

 

Zhou Mi was playing with his robot, flying it around his lab making long sweeps up and down the room, when Leeteuk entered. Zhou Mi automatically tensed, almost sending the robot crashing to the ground.

Leeteuk smiled at him warmly, a complete 180 from the other night when he'd yelled at him. 

"Nice toy," he said as Zhou Mi plucked the robot out of the air and set it down on the desk in front of him. "Did Zitao give that to you?"

"Yes," Zhou Mi replied carefully, slightly anxiously, as he wondered what Leeteuk was doing here. Was he going to yell at him again? 

Leeteuk came over to Zhou Mi's desk, hand smoothing down the papers that Zhou Mi had stacked on top. "I'm sorry about last night. I was caught off guard, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you. I hope you forgive me." His eyes were steady, crinkled at the edges in a small smile, and he appeared completely sincere. But Zhou Mi didn't know if he trusted it. 

"Of course," Zhou Mi replied, injecting as much sincerity as he could into his voice. But he was still wary, waiting for Leeteuk's other side to drop. It didn't come though, with Leeteuk patting him on the shoulder and giving him another one of his warm dimpled smiles before leaving. 

Zhou Mi was bemused. He sat back in his chair, his head thrown back and resting on the headrest as he stared up at the ceiling. He didn't even notice that Kyuhyun had entered until Kyuhyun cleared his throat.

Zhou Mi lifted his head and for some reason his cheeks and the tips of his ears flushed red under Kyuhyun's appraising gaze. 

"Good, you haven't died," Kyuhyun muttered. 

"Oh. Um. No," Zhou Mi replied, caught off guard. He sat up fully and his arm brushed his desk, almost sending the robot crashing to the floor. He managed to catch it in an awkward fumbling move, feeling the back of his neck grow hot. 

"Nice toy." 

Zhou Mi looked at the robot in his hand in surprise. "Do you want to -?" He handed it over to Kyuhyun, who took it in interest. "Um… here, let me show you." He also passed over the controller, giving Kyuhyun a quick guide to the controls and not long afterwards the robot was flying in circles above them. 

"It does this too," Zhou Mi added as he walked over to the light switch on the wall, flicking it off before returning to Kyuhyun's side. He pressed the switch on the controller that activated the robot's glow and it flickered as it flew. 

Zhou Mi didn't know what this moment was, whether he was stuck in an alternate universe where Leeteuk was kind to him and Kyuhyun didn't hate him, but he kept finding himself holding his breath in case he was dreaming. He wondered if he should pinch himself, but at the same time - if he was asleep - he didn't want to wake up. 

He could just make out Kyuhyun's features, his side profile, in the glow that the robot emitted. Kyuhyun's hair was getting long, curling against the edges of his ears, but his face was slightly different from when Zhou Mi had known him. He was older, cheeks leaner and cheekbones more pronounced than in his youth, and his eyes had a hardness that hadn't been there previously. 

Zhou Mi knew he was the cause of that. 

"Stop staring at me," Kyuhyun said, although he hadn't taken his eyes off the robot. 

"Sorry," Zhou Mi automatically apologised, wrenching his gaze away to look at the floor. From the corner of his eye he could see Kyuhyun shake his head, before reaching up to catch the robot. He placed it on Zhou Mi's desk, along with the controller, and left the lab, turning the lights back on as he walked past.

Apparently it was a day for visitors, because Jia was next to wander in, finding him brooding in his chair. 

"What's wrong?" she asked him, leaning across to flick him on the forehead. "You look like someone killed your cat." 

"No I don't. And ow!" He rubbed his forehead and scowled at her. 

"That's better. Frowny Zhou Mi is better than mopey Zhou Mi." 

"Why are we friends again?" 

"Because I'm smart, beautiful, and charming," she breezed, coming around the desk to hook an arm around his neck. "Now seriously, what's wrong?" 

"Do you think Kyuhyun still hates me?" 

She rubbed her knuckles on the top of his head as he tried to flinch away. "I should've guessed this was about him. No, I don't think he hates you. You should talk to him."

Zhou Mi sighed. "I can't! I don't know how to! I feel all.. awkward and weird." And scared. 

Perhaps that was the truth: Zhou Mi was scared. If he pretended that nothing had changed, that Kyuhyun still hated him, then that was solid: constant and certain. And he could tell himself there was nothing he could do about it. 

"If he has forgiven you, you certainly don't deserve him."

"I know." Zhou Mi pouted down at his desk, shoulders slumping. 

"Oh god, come on. Let's go annoy Fei, you're being too mopey." 

Jia physically dragged Zhou Mi out of his lab, despite the size difference between them, finally putting a smile on Zhou Mi's face. 

Sometimes Zhou Mi thought that perhaps he didn't deserve her friendship either. 

 

*

 

In a couple of days, the next group got themselves ready for the flight down to Kapteyn b. 

The night before, at dinner, the crew had discussed amongst themselves who to send next to the surface. The intention was to travel a bit further on this trip, using rovers - vehicles that resembled dune buggies. These would be flown down to Kapteyn b, unpacked, and would remain on the planet permanently. While they had several rovers, there was only space on the landing module to take one at a time. 

Along with Zhou Mi, Kyuhyun and Leeteuk, who everyone agreed should be in the second group down, Kangin was included to unpack the rover and assist Leeteuk with preparing the landing module for the flight back. Also, after a lot of discussion, it was decided that the fifth person would be Jia. Zhou Mi and Jia were to take the rover to head out and investigate the southern polar ice cap. 

Except, in the morning, Jia limped into the mess, leaning heavily on Fei as she was helped to a chair. 

"She twisted her ankle," Fei told everyone. Joonmyeon had already headed down to the infirmary to grab supplies. It was an unfortunate accident - Jia had been heading up to the mess and slipped. She was really frustrated and annoyed with herself as it meant that she couldn't go down to Kapteyn b as planned. 

"Sorry Mi," she apologised. "I really wanted to come today." 

"That's okay," Zhou Mi tried to reassure her. "I'll go see the ice caps myself. You can come next time when your ankle has recovered." There would be plenty of time for all of them to visit the surface, but he understood her disappointment. Depending on the severity of the sprain, it would be at least a week before Joonmyeon would clear her for the travel. 

It was too late to replace Jia's spot considering the preparations that went into the trip, so with a quick consoling hug, Zhou Mi headed down to the bottom deck with the other five to be suited up. Before he entered the landing module, Zitao came wandering down. 

"This is for you!" he said, arms full of a remote controlled machine, controller dangling from one hand. "It's a drone," he explained. "Jia asked me for it."

The drone was a quadcopter, over a metre long, with four arms that had rotors at the end. In the middle of the drone was the main body which held the battery and a camera. 

Zitao gave Zhou Mi a quick rundown on how to operate it, and he looked pleased when Zhou Mi praised him for it. "I can make more," Zitao offered. "Or if you need any other robotic things…"

The flight down to Kapteyn b was uneventful, and once landed Kangin immediately went to work unpacking the rover, assisted by Leeteuk. Zhou Mi also tried to help but quickly found that he was just getting in their way. 

"Right, all done," Kangin said, just audible through his helmet. "Zhou Mi, you're taking the rover, right?" 

Zhou Mi bounced his way over. The rover was an open vehicle, with six large thick wheels that had chevron treads made of titanium. It could seat two people comfortably - or three people uncomfortably in an emergency - with space for equipment. The vehicle ran on solar powered batteries, and had a maximum speed of 60km/hr. All of the crew had been trained to use the rovers prior to departure, although it was fairly intuitive and much like driving a car. 

"Are you going by yourself?" Kangin asked. It wasn't ideal - particularly since Zhou Mi was going further afield than the others could walk. But with Jia stuck on the main ship, he didn't think Leeteuk or Kyuhyun wanted to accompany him. Still, Zhou Mi considered asking Leeteuk. 

"I'll go with him," Kyuhyun offered, making his way over to the rover. 

"Are you sure?" Leeteuk asked, and through his clear helmet Zhou Mi thought he could see something pass on his face. But it went so quickly he couldn't identify the emotion. "Zhou Mi could go by himself." 

"No he can't, it's too dangerous." It was a big risk for Zhou Mi to take the rover by himself. If an accident happened, no one would know about it. "Unless you want to go with him?" 

Leeteuk stared at Kyuhyun for a moment before he shook his head. "No, it's fine. You go with him." 

That decided, Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun buckled themselves into the rover. Kangin gave them a brief reminder of how to operate the vehicle, and they were off, Zhou Mi in the drivers seat. 

"Thanks for coming," Zhou Mi said tentatively as he drove, speaking loud enough that Kyuhyun could hear him through their helmets. 

"It would have been suicide for you to go alone," Kyuhyun replied shortly, and that was the end of the conversation. 

The landing site wasn't too far from the southern ice cap, considering the size of the planet, but it still took them 75 minutes to drive there. Most of the landscape in this area was relatively flat - the reason they had selected that spot for landing - but in the distance they could see gigantic mountain ranges reaching high into the sky. 

After the long drive, in which they didn't talk to each other at all, they finally reached their destination. It had been getting progressively colder as they neared and Zhou Mi was thankful for the protection of his space suit. Even so, they wouldn't be able to stay for too long. 

The southern ice cap was enormous. From the view that Invenio had as it orbited the planet, it was estimated to be over 10,000km in diameter, with the northern ice cap being even larger still. And from where they stood, the ice cap jutted out of the ground like a towering mountain - taller than they could even see. There was a gentle slope where the ice met the ground, and Zhou Mi drove the rover up for a few minutes until he decided they were high enough. 

"We're here," Zhou Mi said, pressing the button to activate the comms, mostly to let Invenio and Leeteuk know they'd arrived safely. Kyuhyun had already gotten off the rover, and was staring at the ice cap in awe. 

It was a beautiful sight: a vast expanse of pure ice with a bluish tint, covered with a layer of white snow. Zhou Mi fiddled with the small camera that was attached to the front of the rover to ensure that it was properly broadcasting images back to Invenio. 

Kyuhyun was a few steps away, already crouching down to take a sample of the surface snow. Zhou Mi left him to his own work, pulling out the drone from the rover. He set the drone flying up to do a quick survey of the surrounding area. They'd analyse the images later, but for now he watched the flight through a small screen in the drone's remote. 

The entire area was pristine, and devoid of any life as far as he could tell. So far the planet seemed lifeless - of higher life forms that seemed almost certain, and even the soil and water samples Zhou Mi had taken the previous day didn't contain any bacteria. 

After the drone's survey was finished, Zhou Mi had one more task before heading back to the landing module - take a core sample.

He had put a core drill in the back of the rover, an instrument that would enable him to take a cylindrical sample section of the ice. It would only take a short section as he didn't currently have the equipment to take a more detailed in depth sample, but even a 50cm section could provide interesting information. 

Back on Earth, ice cores were often used to provide information about climate history. As ice formed from the buildup of annual layers of snow, items such as dust, ash, pollen and bubbles of atmospheric gas would become trapped each year, and could be used to reconstruct a detailed climate record. While a history of Kapteyn b's climate would be fascinating, the sample could also be used to estimate how much CO2 and other gases were trapped in the ice and that was what Zhou Mi was truly interested in. 

Zhou Mi put the drill into position, waiting for it to complete the sample. Afterwards he placed the core into a sterile tube, storing it into an well insulated box. With the lower temperatures on Kapteyn b it would be sufficient to prevent the sample from melting, but Zhou Mi also packed snow around it to keep it cold.

It was time to head back to the landing module. They only had enough oxygen for a couple more hours. He told Kyuhyun it was time to leave and they made their way back to the rover, buckling in, and Zhou Mi started the engine.

The rover picked up speed slowly as it rolled down the hill of ice, gradually getting faster and faster. It was a bit too fast though, and Zhou Mi stepped on the brakes.

The brakes didn't respond. Zhou Mi pressed again, harder again, even as the rover was steadily gaining more and more speed, rolling down far too quickly on the slippery ice.

"Zhou Mi?" Kyuhyun asked, in obvious nervousness. 

"The brakes," Zhou Mi quickly explained. "They're not working. Hold on!"

They were almost at the bottom, careening out of control, and if they hit the rock at that speed a crash was inevitable. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," Zhou Mi swore, one hand clinging to the rover and the other pulling the handbrake hard in a last minute desperate maneuver. The rover seized up, sending the vehicle sliding sideways before it tipped over. 

"Zhou Mi?" Kyuhyun?" Min's voice through the radio was anxious. Up on Invenio they would have been monitoring the rover's broadcasted images. "Nothing's transmitting. Are you two okay?"

The rover had tipped on to its left side, with Zhou Mi nearest the ground and Kyuhyun hanging above him. Fortunately the seatbelts had worked, and as the rover had a roll cage, they had been protected as it had tipped. While Zhou Mi's head hurt from where he'd cracked his head into his helmet when it hit the back of his seat, it didn't seem as if he had suffered any permanent damage. His space suit had also held up, and miraculously his helmet hadn't shattered. 

Zhou Mi unbuckled his seatbelt, worming his way out and clear of the rover with difficulty. 

"Kyuhyun, can you hear me?" 

He was answered with a low groan, and the wave of relief that Kyuhyun was still alive was so strong that Zhou Mi's knees trembled and he automatically raised a hand to press against his heart. As he stood up he could see Kyuhyun opening his eyes. 

"Are you okay?" 

Kyuhyun groaned again. It took him so long to answer that time seemed to stop. "Yes, but that _really_ hurt," Kyuhyun finally managed to say. 

Working together they managed to unbuckle Kyuhyun from his seat so he could also get clear of the rover. They sat next to it for a minute, foreheads resting on their pulled up knees as they caught their breath. 

"Zhou Mi? Kyuhyun? Are you there?" Min's voice was persistent through the comm link, notes of panic creeping in through the edges. Zhou Mi cleared his throat and pressed the button on his suit to activate the comms so he could respond. 

"We're here. We're okay." 

"What happened?" 

"We had a small accident, but we're fine. We'll be heading back to the lander in a moment."

Zhou Mi stood up, his back aching a little, and he reached out a hand to pull Kyuhyun to his feet. They surveyed the rover, then took up a spot at each end. 

Zhou Mi gave them a count down, "One, two, three -" and they both pushed with all their strength at once, tipping the rover back on to its wheels . 

"Do you think it'll start?" Kyuhyun asked as they both climbed in. The rover didn't look too banged up - they were built to be sturdy and tough - although it did have some rather nasty scrapes and dents on its left side. Either way, they would have to travel slowly back to the landing module as Zhou Mi didn't trust the brakes anymore. 

"I hope so," Zhou Mi answered, pressing the ignition button and mentally crossing his fingers. 

The rover started without any problem, and they grinned at each in relief. It was the first time in a long time that Zhou Mi had seen that smile directed at him, and for a moment his chest felt tight. He had to look away. 

"We're our way back," Zhou Mi said to Invenio. "See you all soon." 

 

* 

 

Joonmyeon frowned at Zhou Mi, tugging on his arm. "Sit down," he ordered. 

"I just need to -"

"Sit DOWN." 

Chastened by that tone in Joonmyeon's voice, Zhou Mi plopped his butt back down on the bed with a sigh. As soon as they had flown back up to Invenio and de-suited, Joonmyeon had been waiting to take them straight to the infirmary, despite their protests that they were uninjured and didn't require treatment.

Kyuhyun had given up long ago, letting Joonmyeon look him over and was now resting in the other bed, propped up against the headboard, legs pulled up and watching the silent war between Zhou Mi and Joonmyeon with amusement. Unlike Kyuhyun, Zhou Mi was being particularly disobedient. He was worried about his core sample. After removing his space suit, Joonmyeon hadn't given him any opportunity to put the sample in the freezer or for him to ask someone else to take care of it. 

"The sooner you let me check you out, the faster you can leave," Joonmyeon grumbled at him, shining a torch into Zhou Mi's left eye. Zhou Mi fidgeted, knee bouncing up and down, and finally Joonmyeon released him with a sigh. "Fine, you seem okay. Ideally I'd keep you here for at least an hour to ensure you don't have a concussion, but you're not going to be willing to sit still for that long, are you?" 

Zhou Mi did his best puppy dog eyes at his friend, and Joonmyeon gave his nose a flick in response. "Okay, go on then. Get out. And don't overdo things!" he shouted at Zhou Mi's back as he sped out. 

Zhou Mi headed back to the airlock on the bottom deck. Someone had unloaded the landing module while he'd been in the infirmary, and the box containing his precious core sample was sitting out in the open. He took it up to his lab, and when he opened the box, was relieved to find that it hadn't melted. Zhou Mi packed it back into the box, and headed up to the kitchen to place it in the freezer. He would need a full day to analyse the sample. 

After storing it safely, he was leaving the kitchen when he came across Kangin. 

"Hey Mi," Kangin said, stopping him. "Can we talk?" He looked troubled and Zhou Mi wondered what he wanted to discuss. Kangin asked if they could go somewhere more private for the conversation, so they headed back to Zhou Mi's lab. On the elevator ride down, Kangin was quiet, looking as if he was thinking deeply.

Once in the lab, Zhou Mi shut the door and gestured Kangin to a stool. "What did you want to talk about?"

"I had a quick look at the rover after you returned to the landing module," Kangin began, looking down at his hands. "I didn't want to say anything while we were there, but…" he looked up at Zhou Mi with a frown, "I think the brake line was cut." 

A chill ran down Zhou Mi's spine, little fingers creeping downwards. "Are you sure?" 

Kangin nodded. "Yes, I'm pretty sure." 

"Do you know when? Was it recent?"

"I don't know," Kangin replied. "It could've been before the rovers were loaded on to the ship, or it could've been yesterday. I don't know."

Had someone deliberately cut the brakes in an effort to hurt Zhou Mi? Or had it just been an unfortunate accident?

"I'll personally inspect the other rovers," Kangin promised. "I'm really sorry, I feel responsible - I mean, I was the one who unpacked it. I'm so glad that neither of you were seriously injured." He looked incredibly troubled at the thought. 

If Kangin was telling the truth, there was no way he could have known that there was a problem with the rover when he unpacked it. Unless he was responsible for the tampering and was just telling Zhou Mi about it to cover his tracks? Zhou Mi's head hurt all of a sudden, and he didn't know if it was due to the accident. But the more Zhou Mi considered it, the more he thought that it couldn't possibly be Kangin. Maybe it was just a pre-existing problem from when the rovers were packed. 

"Do you think I should tell Leeteuk?" Kangin asked, a note of hesitation in his voice. 

"I think…"Zhou Mi said, surprising himself with his next words, "That we should keep it between us." There was no way of predicting how Leeteuk would act on the news. Zhou Mi wondered if Kangin's hesitation was because he thought Leeteuk might hold him responsible. He would make a convenient scapegoat. 

Part of Zhou Mi thought that perhaps Leeteuk would find a way to blame him - as if Zhou Mi had done it for attention or something else equally implausible. 

"Just until we know for sure what happened," Zhou Mi added. 

"I agree," Kangin said quickly, so quickly that it made Zhou Mi wonder. He'd always thought, or assumed, that everyone agreed with Leeteuk's decisions, that they looked up to him as commander, but perhaps that wasn't quite so true. He remembered, in particular, the story that Joonmyeon had told him about Kangin and Leeteuk fighting, way back when Zhou Mi had sprained his ankle. 

Now it made him wonder what the other crew members thought. 

Certainly for Zhou Mi, Leeteuk wasn't his most liked person on board. He supposed that Leeteuk was a good commander. It was a difficult job to unite and keep 19 people on track, and while Zhou Mi could see that Leeteuk could be charming, warm and friendly, unfortunately that always seemed to be directed at someone else. 

Zhou Mi had been in the presence of some great leaders in his lifetime, and sometimes he thought unkindly that Leeteuk wasn't one of them. No doubt that thought coloured his interactions with him, despite Zhou Mi's best attempts to hide it. 

Hours later, Zhou Mi went to the kitchen for a snack. The light was on when he entered, and it appeared that Kyuhyun had had the same idea, as he was head deep in a cupboard. Joonmyeon had prohibited both of them from eating dinner, concerned about a possible concussion, but enough time had now passed that they were out of danger.

Despite being through a pretty scary accident together, Zhou Mi wasn't sure where he stood with Kyuhyun. Lately it had felt, if Zhou Mi was being optimistic, that over the past few months Kyuhyun's animosity towards him had thawed. Certainly he no longer reacted to Zhou Mi in anger, not really since the day he'd yelled at him.

That was like Kyuhyun though. He wasn't quick to anger but when it happened he would explode in a hot quick flash, and then it would be over. In comparison, Zhou Mi internalised his anger, holding it deep inside where it couldn't escape, using it to propel himself further, faster, harder, all while smiling on the outside. They'd rarely fought when they'd been together, not much beyond minor disagreements, so for Zhou Mi to just up and leave was not only unexpected but also particularly harsh. 

Zhou Mi wished now that there had been another way. Kyuhyun told him that he was always so sure of himself, that he followed through on his decisions, and while that was certainly true that didn't mean he didn't doubt them. 

"Find anything good?" Zhou Mi ventured politely, half expecting Kyuhyun to ignore him. But Kyuhyun straightened up, tossing a bag over to Zhou Mi, who was entirely unprepared and nearly dropped it. The bag contained dehydrated apple slices, and Zhou Mi opened it with relish, offering it to Kyuhyun. With Ryeowook concentrating on vegetable production, fruit was an item that everyone missed, and Zhou Mi wondered why the bag of apple slices hadn't already been eaten. All of the good food - dehydrated and dried fruit, chocolate, nuts, candy - had been finished months ago. 

Kyuhyun grabbed a small handful of apple slices, answering Zhou Mi's unspoken question. "I hid them. It's the last bag."

"Oh!" Zhou Mi stopped chewing, looking down at the bag before attempting to hand the whole thing over to Kyuhyun. 

"It's fine," Kyuhyun told him, waving it away. An awkward silence fell upon them as they both ate, the room quiet except for the constant hum of the air circulation system. 

"Are you," Zhou Mi asked hesitantly, crinkling the empty bag in his hands, "Are you okay? I mean -" he added quickly before Kyuhyun could get the wrong idea, "From the crash?" 

"Yeah," Kyuhyun replied. "But is that what you really want to know?" 

It was impossible to lie to someone who knew him so well. "No," Zhou Mi said. "Are _we_ okay?" He just needed to know. If Kyuhyun still despised him - as he rightly should - then Zhou Mi could deal with it. What he didn't know how to deal with was this fragile, unsteady, ceasefire, and constantly being on edge as he worried that it was going to blow up at any moment. 

"You can stop that," Kyuhyun told him, his tone mild. 

"Stop?"

"Walking around me on eggshells. Looking at me like a kicked puppy. I forgive you for being an asshole."

"You forgive me? But… really?"

"Yes, but it doesn't mean anything - don't think that this is about you. I decided that being angry at you was only hurting myself. Just because I forgive you doesn't meant that we're friends."

There were so many things that Zhou Mi wanted to say but Kyuhyun's words immediately shut him up. Kyuhyun was right - it didn't mean anything. Zhou Mi took a deep breath then exhaled, releasing all the air from his lungs in a steady stream. There was nothing else to say to that. It didn't mean anything but it was still more than he deserved. 

"Thanks," he said instead. "Sleep well."

 

*

 

After the unsettling conversation with Kyuhyun, Zhou Mi couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned in his sleep pod for a couple of hours, before deciding it was futile, climbing out quietly to head to his lab. 

Not long into it, he was interrupted by Ryeowook, who entered and knocked on the wall to alert Zhou Mi of his presence.

"Couldn't sleep either?" Zhou Mi asked, waving him over to where he was sitting behind his desk. "Something bothering you?" he said lightly, meaning it as a tease but Ryeowook eyes widened at his question. 

"Are you feeling okay?" Ryeowook asked, keeping a hand behind his back as he seated himself on one of the stools. Zhou Mi wondered if that was the problem - Ryeowook was one of the more empathetic members of the crew, and no doubt he would've been frantic with worry at Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun's accident. 

"I'm fine," Zhou Mi said reassuringly, giving himself a couple of knocks on his head with his fist. "See? Hard as a rock." While they really did come away incredibly lucky from the accident with nothing more than a few minor scratches and scrapes, Zhou Mi had already moved past it. Their entire mission was high risk, and he couldn't spend time dwelling on what could have happened. Although, he was keen to figure out how the brake lines were cut, that was secondary to his work on Kapteyn b. 

"I brought you something," Ryeowook said, gesturing for Zhou Mi to hold out his hands. When he did, Ryeowook deposited four strawberries into his palm, small but perfectly formed and bright red. "The first ones of the crop," Ryeowook smiled proudly, like someone showing off their newborn baby. "I saved a few for Kyuhyun too." 

The sweet fragrance of the berries drifted in the air, and Zhou Mi inhaled deeply, incredibly touched by the gesture. "Are you sure?" 

"After the day you had… yeah. I know it's not much, but…"

"No, it's wonderful," Zhou Mi told him. He popped a strawberry into his mouth, closing his eyes in bliss as he savoured the flavour. None of them had eaten fresh fruit since they left Earth and there was really nothing like it: tart, juicy and sweet. "Ryeowook, this is amazing! You have to try them." He handed two back, insisting that Ryeowook eat them. 

After they'd finished eating, Ryeowook asked, "Did you mean what you said yesterday? About Kapteyn b being an ideal candidate for terraforming?"

Zhou Mi nodded. It was still early, but he was almost entirely convinced by this stage. Like any good scientist, he would wait for the data before giving a definite answer, but part of him _knew_ it. He'd look hard for any evidence to disprove it, but he could sense all the potential that was locked away in the planet. 

"But it's not decided yet, right? We have to look at all options. I mean - we can't just decide to permanently alter the planet to suit our needs."

Unfortunately that was where they disagreed. The only reason against terraforming for Zhou Mi was if it turned out to be impossible due to the limits of their technology. The idea of not doing it just because they, as humans, didn't have the right to - that didn't even factor in his considerations. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid we disagree on that point."

Ryeowook frowned. "You want to destroy this planet the way we destroyed Earth. What gives us the right to play creator and destroyer?"

"The mere fact that we're sitting here having this conversation," Zhou Mi said, but gently, because Ryeowook was his friend. 

"Surely that means we're not entitled to a privileged status. We should use that to acknowledge that we exist in an ecosystem, and we have a moral right to look after it." 

Zhou Mi was a scientist, not an ethicist. He was a man of action, of evidence, not of words and debates. 

"We're out here - all alone," Zhou Mi said. "There's no one else, there might never be anyone else. My morals tell me that I'm going to do everything I can to ensure our survival." 

"I'm going to try and change your mind on that," Ryeowook told him in response.

"You're welcome to." But just as Zhou Mi doubted he would ever be able to change Ryeowook's position, it was unlikely that Ryeowook would be able to change his. Ryeowook excused himself, saying he was heading back to bed, leaving Zhou Mi with some troubling thoughts. 

Just how far would Ryeowook go to change Zhou Mi's mind? How far would he go to protect Kapteyn b? Would he go as far as hurting someone?

Would he deliberately harm Zhou Mi if it meant protecting the planet?

 

*

 

Qian and Zitao burst into the mess while Zhou Mi was eating breakfast. He'd slept in that morning, tired from the previous day and slightly unsettled by his conversation with Ryeowook. In addition, Joonmyeon had told both him and Kyuhyun that they weren't allowed to join the flights to Kapteyn b's surface for several days. It had initially been a week, but Joonmyeon had caved at Zhou Mi's annoying persistence, although he wouldn't clear them immediately. 

Joonmyeon was far too good at his job, Zhou Mi grumbled to himself as he ate his oatmeal. Oatmeal was one of his least favourite foods, stodgy and bland, but it was about all of the breakfast items they had left. Zhou Mi couldn't wait until Ryeowook grew some rice so they could eat fresh rice, and he had even spoken of growing lab eggs. 

Zhou Mi didn't know who was on today's visit to Kapteyn b, but it was obviously not Qian and Zitao, who had taken a seat on either side of him. Zhou Mi lowered his spoon from his mouth back into his bowl, unable to eat under the sparkling eyes of the other two. 

"Yes?"

"What's the surface like?" Qian asked. Zitao was practically bouncing up and down in his chair, like someone had placed a tightly coiled spring inside of him. 

"The surface?"

"You know," Qian clarified. "The composition."

"Ah." Zhou Mi thought back to the results of his soil analysis. "It's mostly rocky, but there's a deep layer of soil, although technically that's not the correct term for it." The soil on Kaptyen b was actually something called fine regolith, which was the result of rock being disintegrated by, probably, continuous meteoric impact or mechanical weathering which ground the rock to fine particles over time. Back on Earth, soil was something that contained organic content, but from Zhou Mi's analysis, the regolith on Kapteyn b contained nothing organic. Zhou Mi listed the main elemental components and Zitao whooped. "Why do you ask?" 

"You know that project Qian and I have been working on?" Zitao said. Zhou Mi didn't know, but he nodded anyway, because it was apparent that Zitao was about to tell him all about it. "We were thinking of the best way to construct a base on the planet. And Qian thought -"

"Actually it was Zitao's idea."

"- that we could build a 3D printing robot that would use the material on Kapteyn b's surface to just print a base." He rattled off the technical information, several minutes of detail that went straight over Zhou Mi's head. 

"So it sounds perfect," Qian finished. 

Zhou Mi looked back and forth between them, feeling a bit lost but buoyed by their enthusiasm. "Great?" 

"Great!" Zitao and Qian chorused together. 

"Thanks for the chat," Qian added as Zitao clapped a heavy hand on Zhou Mi's shoulder, pushing himself to a standing position. "Enjoy your breakfast!"

 

*

It was a question that humanity had asked almost as long as they had been staring up at the sky.

"Are we alone?"

"Is there anyone else out there?"

Could Earth really be the only place in the entire universe where life had spontaneously sprung up? Zhou Mi didn't know if that was the case, but it didn't take much analysis for him to conclude that Kapteyn b was lifeless. Perhaps there had been life there once - at over 11 billion years old, more than twice the age of Earth - who knows what had occurred in its history. If, in those 11 billion years, life had indeed once existed, Zhou Mi doubted that it would have been anything other than simple lifeforms such as bacteria. 

Despite its lifelessness, the more Zhou Mi visited the planet, the more he felt a connection to the place - a connection that he'd never really felt with Earth. He tried to spend as much time as possible on the surface, balancing that desire with attempting not to monopolise all the surface missions. Every couple of days Invenio would send a group down, eventually cycling through all the crew members until everyone had visited at least once. 

Time in the planet's orbit passed by quickly. A month after the first landing, Zhou Mi wanted to collect further soil and rock samples. He was paired with Ryeowook and they took a rover to visit a grouping of small hills, about thirty minutes drive away from the lander, where Zhou Mi wanted to collect samples to see whether the composition of the hills differed from the plains. 

After the first accident, Kangin advised Zhou Mi that he had personally inspected all the other rovers. Nothing unexpected had happened since, and none of the other rovers had been tampered with - if that was indeed what had happened - and Zhou Mi did his best to put it to the back of his mind, telling himself that they had just been terribly unlucky. He didn't have time to think about it and there was no way of investigating it, so he decided to let it go for now. 

Ryeowook was driving on this occasion, and they made small talk as they travelled. When they reached the hills, Ryeowook parked the rover and they both disembarked to start their explorations. Zhou Mi made an immediate beeline for the hills, beginning the climb upwards, while Ryeowook stayed below. 

Kapteyn b had many mountains - towering hunks of stone that dominated the landscape - but this grouping was only small, reaching about 20m high, with rounded gentle slopes worn away by wind and rain erosion. For over an hour, Zhou Mi happily explored, cataloguing and collecting samples as he explored the terrain. He was so focussed on his task that he only looked up when he sensed the light around him dimming. He stood, peering down at the plains below, and realised he was in trouble.

Towards them a huge wall of dust was approaching, travelling across the flat ground so quickly that Zhou Mi knew that he and Ryeowook needed to evacuate immediately. He collected his tools, hastily trying to secure them in this waist belt, as he began the descent. 

Over the comms, Soryong's voice echoed. "Everyone on Kapteyn b - get back to the lander immediately. There's a incoming dust storm. I repeat, get back to the lander immediately."

The warning was a little too late, Zhou Mi thought ungratefully as he picked up his pace, sprinting his way down the hill to get to the rover. 

"Zhou Mi?" Ryeowook was saying over the comms. "Where are you? We need to go - now."

Zhou Mi was about to respond, to tell him he was halfway down the hill and would be there in just a second, when his foot hit a loose stone. It slid out from underneath him, sending him flying backwards as he lost his footing, falling heavily.

For a moment Zhou Mi was so dazed that all he could think was: _Joonmyeon is going to kill me_. Meanwhile, Ryeowook was still on the comms, calling for him. 

"I'm on my way," Zhou Mi confirmed.

"Zhou Mi? Where are you?"Ryeowook continued to call, and Zhou Mi realised that Ryeowook couldn't hear him, his voice becoming higher and more stressed the more he called. 

Zhou Mi picked himself up, shakily making his way down the hill, his head still slightly dazed.

"Ryeowook, you need to get back to the lander - NOW."

"I can't find Zhou Mi!"

Around him it was becoming dimmer and dimmer as the dust in the atmosphere blocked out more and more of the sun. 

"Get back to the lander!"

"But, Zhou Mi -"

"You have to get back NOW. We don't know how long this storm will last and you have limited oxygen. GO." 

There was a choked sob over the comms, and then Ryeowook said, "Zhou Mi, can you hear me? I'll come back for you, I promise. After the storm has passed, I'll come back for you."

By now the winds had picked up, battering him fiercely, and Zhou Mi could no longer see the plains below him, the air heavy with red-brown dust. He had almost no visibility and had to stop, in case he lost his footing again or fell off a cliff. He managed to stumble across a small crevice, just a gap in between two larger rocks, in which he folded himself to wait out the storm. 

He was completely disoriented in the weird red-brown dimness, and the wind still managed to find its way past his protective boulders. As it picked up, it slammed the dust into him with so much force he could feel it through his suit. Zhou Mi had no idea how much time was passing. The comms was silent, its signals disrupted by the storm, and the only noise Zhou Mi could hear was the whistling gale of the wind as it blew. 

Time and space seemed to work oddly in this semi-twilight, and after a while Zhou Mi became dimly aware that his suit was beeping – a warning that his oxygen was running low. Had that much time really passed? Or had the exertion as he ran used extra oxygen? Had his tank been damaged when he fell? 

_It wouldn’t be so bad to die out here, would it?_ he thought to himself, the crazed musings of a disoriented mind, feeling at the moment that he had few regrets. He’d achieved his dream – sort of. Even though he wouldn’t get to see it through to the end, he hoped that he’d left enough info on Invenio to give the rest of the crew a good start.

He felt so heavy, gravity pulling him down strongly, that he felt as if he was sliding beyond the known dimensions of space and time, and in the distance he was sure he could see his grandmother and his father, waving at him. 

It wasn't until he flew closer that he realised they were waving at him to go back, _go back_. 

Go _back_.


	5. Novo

In an attempt to come up with a Theory of Everything, scientists put forward an interesting mathematical model to find a common explanation for the four forces seen in nature (electromagnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear force, and gravity). It was theorised that at its base level, all particles and forms of energy in the universe could be constructed out of one-dimensional strings, which vibrate at different rates. In addition, the theory predicted multiple dimensions - many, many more than the four dimensions (three spatial and one of time) that people could observe. 

Some theorised that this could mean Many Worlds, where our universe was parallel to an infinite number of parallel worlds, just a minuscule distance from one another - so close yet never touching. 

_Go back._

Zhou Mi shut his eyes tightly, blocking out the image of his grandmother and father, and as he did so he could feel himself sliding, slipping through that gap between worlds. He slid through brane after brane, through multiple dimensions, through multiple universes, picking up speed faster and faster and faster and ---

_Zhou Mi._

Through the haziness there was a voice. Zhou Mi opened his eyes and --

Kyuhyun.

He floated in front of him, indistinct and blurry, rage darkening his features.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Alternate Universe Kyuhyun asked, voice thick with suppressed anger, so hot that it sent fire flickering along the edges of Zhou Mi's skin.

Oh. Zhou Mi shrunk under the gaze, pulling himself impossibly further into himself, feeling like he was going to turn inside out. Was this the universe where he hadn't left? Was this the universe where Kyuhyun woke up before he managed to walk out the door? 

Perhaps this meant he had another chance. Zhou Mi looked down at his hands. He was clutching a piece of paper, the words _I'm sorry_ standing out darkly against the white, and told himself: no. He screwed the note up, crushed it so small it disappeared into nothing. Perhaps in this universe he could try again. 

"Zhou Mi," Kyuhyun was saying, his words become more distinct and the anger transforming into concern. "Zhou Mi?" His voice was so beautiful, Zhou Mi thought idly, so melodic. It had always been one of his most favourite things about him. 

"Oh my god, is he dead?"

_That's weird_ , Zhou Mi thought. That sounded like Ryeowook. But he didn't belong in this universe, did he? Why would Ryeowook be here? 

"He's not dead, why the fuck would you say that?" Kyuhyun spat and the anger was back again. "Help me. Goddamit Zhou Mi, open your eyes."

_Of course I'm not dead_ , Zhou Mi wanted to say. _In this universe I'm alive and I'm going to try again._ And -- _what do you mean, open my eyes? They're already open._

Zhou Mi slid through another brane and everything changed again. In this universe, he never met Kyuhyun, he lived and died without even knowing him, and somehow that hurt more than the universe where he left him. Zhou Mi shuddered and kept going --- 

_Open your eyes._

"Zhou Mi? I'm here. It's me. I'm here."

He couldn't help himself. He followed the voice calling him, chasing after it until time and space looped in upon itself to return him to where he started. He opened his eyes to blinding brightness, lungs inflating so hard in his chest it was as if they were going to burst and send him floating into the sky. 

"Give me the oxygen, fuck, quickly." 

"Kyuhyun?" Zhou Mi choked, barely a whisper, as he felt hands pulling at him. His body protested, having been contorted in one position for too long, muscles tense and aching. 

"You need to move, I have to replace your oxygen. Come on." 

"Where am I?" 

"Stop trying to talk." Kyuhyun's voice was firm, steady, and Zhou Mi followed it again, had followed it through the multiple dimensions to return here, knowing now that he would follow it anywhere. 

 

*

 

The rest was hazy, more dreamlike than a dream. Somehow Kyuhyun and Ryeowook managed to pry Zhou Mi loose from where he'd huddled behind the rocks, supporting him as he lumbered awkwardly down the hill like a newborn deer. They'd pushed him into the rover, Kyuhyun on one side and Ryeowook on the other. Ryeowook drove, pushing the vehicles to its limits, as they raced across the plains back to the lander. 

Zhou Mi didn't remember much, could barely keep his eyes open, but afterwards about all he could recall was Kyuhyun's hand gripping his tightly, squeezing every so often to keep him awake. 

"I was going to try again, Kyuhyun," he mumbled incoherently. "I messed up but I had the chance to try again. I'm so sorry. I screwed up the note, I wasn't going to leave, we were going to be together again. But I came back to here? How did that happen?" 

"Stop talking." There was another squeeze on his hand. "We're almost there." 

 

*

 

Zhou Mi had been right about one thing: Joonmyeon was not happy with him.

When Zhou Mi woke up in the infirmary, Joonmyeon was sitting by the bed. 

"Welcome back," Joonmyeon greeted him, tone a little sarcastic but there was relief in his eyes. "Could you perhaps stay out of trouble for a while now?" He reached for some water, placing a straw at Zhou Mi's lips. "Drink."

Zhou Mi took a small sip, the coolness of the water soothing his dry throat. Joonmyeon put the water down on the table next to him, picking up a damp cloth and wiping Zhou Mi's forehead. 

"How are you feeling?" 

Joonmyeon gave him the water again and Zhou Mi took several long sips, wetting his mouth before he was able to respond. "Tired." 

Joonmyeon hummed. "You've been out for about a day thanks to the oxygen deprivation and dehydration. Kyuhyun and Ryeowook found you just in time." 

Joonmyeon left him and Zhou Mi rested for a while, until the sound of the door opening and closing woke him. He cracked an eye open, and Ryeowook slunk over to the side of the bed quietly, if he was expecting to be scolded. 

"I'm so sorry," he said, before Zhou Mi could even say anything. "I'm so sorry I left, dammit, I-"

"It's okay," Zhou Mi told him, reaching for his hand. "You didn't have a choice - I would have done the same." The number one rule in an emergency was to save yourself, because you couldn't help anyone else if you were also harmed. "Anyway, you came back, just like you promised." 

Ryeowook slumped in the chair. "Kyuhyun was so, so angry when I arrived at the lander without you. I thought he was going to kill me." He chewed his lip nervously, shuddering at the memory. "If something had happened to you…"

"I'm fine. Just a couple of days in the infirmary, and a scolding from Joonmyeon. It's no big deal." 

Ryeowook still looked troubled. "We're friends right? Even though we have our differences, we're still friends?" 

"Of course we are," Zhou Mi answered immediately. 

"I need to te - " Whatever Ryeowook was going to say was interrupted by Joonmyeon coming in to check on Zhou Mi. Ryeowook hastily stood up. "I'll talk to you later. I'm glad you're okay." 

He left in a hurry, the feeling so awkward that even Joonmyeon asked about it. "What was that about?"

"I don't know," Zhou Mi replied, wondering that himself. "I really don't." 

 

*

 

Joonmyeon finally cleared Zhou Mi to leave the infirmary after countless hours of nagging. 

"You are the worst patient I've ever had," Joonmyeon grumbled at him, pulling the blankets back and helping Zhou Mi sit up. "Not only do you not listen to any of my advice but you keep hurting yourself." 

"Thanks Doc. I love you too," Zhou Mi told him brightly, happy to be getting up. He hated being stuck in bed and he desperately wanted a shower. 

"Fine, fine, get out." Joonmyeon shooed him out. "I don't want to see you back here!" he yelled after him. 

Zhou Mi went straight to the bathrooms. He cleaned his teeth, spitting out all the grossness that had accumulated while he'd been recovering. The shower was next, and he stripped off the gown he'd been wearing and doused himself under the spray with a happy sigh, letting all the events of the past few days wash off him and feeling himself gradually come back to normal. The showers were timed, to not waste their precious water which was recycled on the ship, so it ended far too quickly. He contemplated turning it on again but then his stomach growled, so loudly it echoed in the room, so he decided a trip to the kitchen was more necessary. The kitchen was empty when he entered, thankfully, as the noises from his stomach sounded embarrassingly like it was about to eat itself. 

The only thing Zhou Mi could find that was easy to prepare was the dreaded oatmeal, and he was shoveling this into his mouth when Kyuhyun entered. Zhou Mi swallowed quickly, taken aback by the anger on Kyuhyun's face. 

Kyuhyun took two long strides over to him and punched in the arm. 

"Idiot. Fucking idiot." 

Zhou Mi's spoon dropped to the table, clattering and spreading oatmeal on the surface, as he clutched his arm, uncertain and confused. 

"I changed my mind, I am angry at you again," Kyuhyun said to him through narrowed eyes, but he seemed to be calming quickly. "You stupid idiot." 

Since it didn't appear that Kyuhyun was about to hit him again, although who knew if that was the case - Zhou Mi hadn't expected to be greeted with a punch in the first place. Zhou Mi gingerly picked up his spoon again. 

"Okay? Um, by the way I wanted to say thanks for saving me," he said tentatively, not sure how to deal with these mood swings. 

"You know," Kyuhyun tells him, almost in defeat as he sat down, "You are so frustrating."

"Okay??"

"Stupid and frustrating," he continued, as if Zhou Mi hadn't spoken at all. "Next time you decide to prance around in a dust storm, can you please leave me out of it?"

Zhou Mi unconsciously pouted at his oatmeal. "Thanks anyway," he said. He didn't know why his heart suddenly felt so sad - did Kyuhyun regret helping him? Was that what this was about? Did Kyuhyun really dislike him so much that he would rather see him gone?

"Don't do that."

Zhou Mi looked up to find Kyuhyun looking at him with a weird expression, eyebrows drawn together in consternation. 

"I'm sorry?"

"Stop making me feel sorry for you."

"I -" Zhou Mi shook his head. "I don't know what you want me to say," he finally said honestly, pushing his bowl away, appetite gone. "I don't know what you want. Just tell me. If you want me to stay out of your way I will. I don't know what to do."

"In the rover, you kept babbling nonsense, do you remember?"

Zhou Mi didn't - not really. It was all a bit hazy. He said as much to Kyuhyun.

"When you left," and Zhou Mi knew he was referring to that day years ago, "I was a complete mess. I didn't know why you'd gone, and - even though everyone told me not to - I blamed myself." 

Zhou Mi's heart cracked as guilt hammered at it, a hairline fracture that grew with every word that Kyuhyun spoke.

"For months and months I was like a zombie, barely functioning. How was I meant to move on when I didn't know why you'd left? What had I done that was so awful that made you walk out without a single word?" Part of Zhou Mi wanted to beg Kyuhyun to stop, but then he also knew he deserved to hear this - to know how badly he'd hurt him. "And I had to be the one who got rid of everything - to throw out your stuff, sell our apartment. I had to tell everyone - my family, our friends, and when they asked 'why?' all I could say was 'I don't know'. Do you know how pathetic that made me seem? In some ways it would've been easier if you'd died because… knowing that you were out there somewhere: living, breathing, probably loving someone else, hurt me so fucking much. You had moved on and I was just stuck." 

"It wasn't like that," Zhou Mi whispered. 

"And then you started popping up - I kept seeing your name on articles, saw snippets of the talks you gave about your research, and you looked just the same. How was that fair when I was just a shell of myself?" 

"I wasn't the same." 

"And then the worst thing - the absolute worst thing: no matter how much I told myself that I hated you, that you were awful, horrible, selfish, a MONSTER, that I no longer loved you - I couldn't stop. Why couldn't I stop?" Kyuhyun tugged at his hair in frustration. "You make me so angry, you make me so stupid. Why can't I stop?" 

Zhou Mi reached up to pull Kyuhyun's hand out of his hair before he hurt himself, letting it drop as soon as it was free. 

"I want you to tell me the truth now," Kyuhyun said, staring at him seriously. "I wasn't ready to hear it before, but now I need to know: why did you leave me?" 

What was Zhou Mi meant to say? How could he explain that he'd broken Kyuhyun's heart because he was a coward? He tried, stumbling over his words as he did his best to explain what he'd been feeling, aware that he sounded like the biggest fool. "And I don't - never expected - you to forgive me," he said finally. "And I know that I don't deserve any kindness from you, but I just want you to know that it wasn't anything you did. It wasn't because I stopped loving you, I never have, I'm just - like you said - stupid." 

"You still love me?"

Zhou Mi's eyes flew up from where he'd been staring at the table. Out of everything he said, that was the part that Kyuhyun picked out? He felt like a bumbling fool again. How was he meant to be so intelligent and yet keep saying the wrong things? The last thing he wanted was for Kyuhyun to feel burdened with his confession. "Yes… but - I don't expect anything from you, I promise." 

Kyuhyun stared him at him for so long that Zhou Mi started to shrink under his gaze. "Okay," he said after a while, getting up from the table. "Maybe I'm stupid too, because I'm giving you a chance to redeem yourself."

"What?" Zhou M said disbelievingly. 

"You're going to make it up to me," Kyuhyun told him. "You need to figure out how, because you're going to make it up to me." 

He left Zhou Mi sitting there, perplexed, unsure of whether he should be exhilarated or frightened. 

 

*

 

Leeteuk was made of sterner stuff than Joonmyeon, and Zhou Mi was banned from visiting the surface of Kapteyn b for two weeks. 

"No, I want to be sure that you're fully recovered," he told him, and Zhou Mi was unable to change his mind. And he wasn't going to lower himself to begging, so he had no choice but to stay put on Invenio. 

He passed the time sifting his way through the data and analysing the samples that he had already collected. And the more Zhou Mi learnt, the more he was convinced that they needed to start terraforming the planet. The transformation would take some time - probably years and years. 

Yesung was still working on his longevity treatment, and the last time Zhou Mi had spoke to him Yesung had indicated that he hoped to at least double the current extension - which would mean adding on another 50-60 years, a rather significant increase to their natural lifespan of approximately 100. But with the treatment still being tested, there was no way of knowing whether it would take, and the sooner they started terraforming the sooner they could focus on building the colony. 

In addition to mulling over this, Zhou Mi also pondered what Kyuhyun meant by giving him a chance to redeem himself. And how exactly was he meant to make it up to him? 

He confided in Jia, who as per usual, told him he was hopeless before attempting to give him actual advice. 

"What did you use to do when you fought? How did you apologise?" 

Zhou Mi searched his memories. "I was really annoying and pitiful until he forgave me?" He smiled to himself, remembering how he used to cling to Kyuhyun, backhugging him until the other man would eventually laugh and forget that he was angry. 

"It's a wonder you had a relationship at all," she commented dryly. 

"He wasn't much better," Zhou Mi said, in defense of himself. Neither of them were perfect. (Though perhaps Zhou Mi was slightly more imperfect than Kyuhyun.) 

"So you were both at hopeless as each other. Wonderful. How fortunate then that you ended up here together."

Zhou Mi thought, rather ungratefully, that Jia wasn't being particularly helpful. He screwed up the paper he'd been scribbling on and threw it at her and laughed in satisfaction when she squeaked. It turned into a childish fight between them as Jia grabbed a pen, tossing it at Zhou Mi's forehead, howling and clutching her stomach when it bounced off. They ended up collapsed against the desk, giggling, with Zhou Mi's eyes wet with tears of laughter. 

 

*

 

It was later, after Zhou Mi had spent a couple of hours in the gym, that he found Kyuhyun behind his desk, looking frustrated, glaring so hard at his computer that it seemed it might catch fire at any moment. Zhou Mi didn't want to interrupt, but he found himself crossing the room, gently disentangling Kyuhyun's hand from his hair. 

"You always do that when you're stressed," Zhou Mi told him when he looked up in surprise, lip still caught between his teeth, letting it out with a small pop. "You won't have any hair left soon." Zhou Mi came around to the other side of Kyuhyun's desk, still slightly wary, a bit skittish, but willing to _try_. "What are you working on? Can I help?"

Kyuhyun huffed, and for a moment Zhou Mi thought it was directed at him, until Kyuhyun started rattling on about his problem - a difficult calculation he was working on to calculate how much carbon dioxide would need to be released to increase the density of the atmosphere. Zhou Mi listened carefully, offering suggestions and comments as to why his calculations weren't adding up. When they'd been together, this had been a common occurrence: they often talked through their problems, bouncing ideas off each other. It felt almost like old times, as Zhou Mi leant on Kyuhyun's desk, grabbing a piece of paper and scribbling down ideas as they came to him. 

"AHHH," Kyuhyun finally said, punching some symbols into his formula and hitting the enter key with a loud clack before leaning back in his chair. "This could be it." 

They looked at the result on his screen with amazement.

"I think we could do this," Zhou Mi said finally, the proof sitting there in the numbers. As it sunk in he became aware that in his excitement he had shifted his chair and was pressed up against Kyuhyun's side. To his surprise, Kyuhyun not only hadn't moved away but was leaning into him, the way he used to. 

Kyuhyun agreed. "I think we could do this." 

 

*

 

If they'd been on Earth, perhaps Zhou Mi would've showered Kyuhyun with flowers and presents - little trinkets to let Kyuhyun know that he was thinking of him. Here, on Invenio, the choices weren't just limited - they were non existent. 

There were no luxuries on board the ship, and the few small treats they'd been allowed to bring on board were long gone. With nothing to give him, and no where to take him, Zhou Mi was stumped as to how he was meant to make it up to Kyuhyun. What was he expecting? Did he want Zhou Mi to prostrate himself, to beg for his forgiveness, to apologise until his throat was hoarse and raw?

"Of course he doesn't," Fei scoffed, handing Zhou Mi another carrot. 

"What am I meant to do then?" Zhou Mi asked, wrinkling his nose at the vegetable as if it was the source of all his problems.

"Peel it," Fei told him, somewhat impatiently. "And hurry up, there's a lot more for you to do."

Zhou Mi picked up the peeler, dragging it down the side of the carrot, taking off the strips of skin. "This just means a lot to me." 

Fei took pity on him. "I know." She leaned over to inspect his work, giving him an approving nod as Zhou Mi moved on to a new carrot. "He probably just wants to know that you still care about him." 

"Of course I do." 

"Then show him." 

But that was the problem, wasn't it? How was he meant to do that? Zhou Mi attacked his new carrot with purpose, and when Fei looked over to find out why he was suddenly so quiet, she burst into hysterical laughter, having to put her knife down before she accidentally stabbed herself.

"What is that? Is that -"

"Feiiiii." 

"Wait until I tell Jia about this." 

Zhou Mi stuck his nose into the air, looking down at her haughtily. "You can tell her anything you like, I'm not embarrassed." The tips of his ears, bright red, belied the lie. 

After they (Fei) had finished cooking, Zhou Mi swooped in and stole the plate she had been about to pick up from under her nose.

"I'll take that one!"

Fei smirked at him knowingly and waved him out of the kitchen.

Out in the mess, everyone was already seated. Zhou Mi, arms stacked with plates, laid them down carefully. He couldn't cook but he'd spent his last couple of years in high school working as a waiter part time, and it was just like riding a bicycle. The _special_ plate was placed in front of Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi danced away before he was tempted to wait for Kyuhyun's reaction.

Fei and Zhou Mi finished serving up, and on his last trip out from the kitchen he noticed that Changmin had switched seats. 

"That's your seat," Changmin pointed out, rather loudly and unsubtly, referring to the chair he'd vacated next to Kyuhyun. From the other end of the table, Zhou Mi could hear Jia laughing as some of the others looked curious as to what was happening. 

Once Zhou Mi was seated, purposely avoiding Kyuhyun's eyes, he was nudged in the ribs before Kyuhyun leaned in to ask, "What is this meant to be?"

"It's stew." 

That got him a grin, that mischievous one that made Kyuhyun look ten years younger. 

"But what's this part?" Kyuhyun gestured with his fork. "Is it meant to be the moon and the stars to represent the lengths you would go to for me?"

Zhou Mi swallowed his mouthful, forcing it down and ignoring the way it burnt his tongue. "It sounds really cheesy when you say it like that," he muttered darkly, although he didn't deny it. They ate, mostly in silence, occasionally adding a comment to the conversations that were happening around the table. After they finished, Kyuhyun laid his hand on Zhou Mi's thigh. 

"Thanks," Kyuhyun said to him, giving his leg a brief squeeze before getting up. 

Zhou Mi looked down to hide his smile. Who needed flowers to win someone over when there was carrots shaped like lumpy stars ? 

 

*

 

"I want to take you on a date."

Kyuhyun stared at Zhou Mi for so long that Zhou Mi wondered if he had grown an extra head, patting himself on the shoulder just to be sure. 

"Where?" Kyuhyun finally replied.

"On Kapteyn b." 

"You want to waste our precious oxygen taking me on a date?" 

The nerve above Zhou Mi's eyebrow twitched. Why did all his ideas sound so pathetic when Kyuhyun vocalised them? They weren't quite as stupid in his head. "Yes." 

Kyuhyun shrugged, turning back to his computer. "Okay." 

"Okay. Okay!" Zhou Mi bit down on his lip to stop himself from beaming brightly and left Kyuhyun to his work. 

 

*

 

"You're taking him on a date?" Joonmyeon said as he slathered ointment on Zhou Mi's back. 

"Uh huh." Zhou Mi flinched as Joonmyeon pressed a little too firmly on the bruise that had come up after Zhou Mi had bumped a bit too hard into a wall. 

"That's… cute? I guess?"

"I think it's really sweet," Zitao piped up from the other bed, where he was sitting, swinging his legs. He'd been in the infirmary chatting to Joonmyeon when Zhou Mi entered, and hadn't left. 

"Thank you, Zitao," Zhou Mi told him, grateful that at least one person wasn't teasing him or thinking he was weird. Admittedly, there wasn't many places to go on a date, or many things to do, but it was the thought that counted. Jia and Fei didn't think so but what did they know? 

"What are you going to do on your date?" Zitao asked. "I'd love to go on a date." His face went all soft and dreamy and Joonmyeon jerked his head to stare at him, making Zhou Mi flinch again as his fingers pressed a bit too hard on his bruise. "What? I think it's nice!" 

"What would you even do on one?" Joonmyeon asked Zitao, Zhou Mi's bruise forgotten. 

Zitao shrugged, pulling up a leg and resting his chin on his knee. "Go for a walk, hold hands, make out. I don't know. Just… be together and not think about the mission for a while. Just pretend that everything's normal." He sighed wistfully. "What are you doing on yours, Zhou Mi?"

Zhou Mi coughed, pulling his shirt back down to cover his back. "Go for a walk, hold hands and make out?" He had been so focussed on asking Kyuhyun and expecting to be rejected that he hadn't thought that far ahead. 

Their very first date had been planned by Kyuhyun. They'd gone mini-golfing, using children's plastic neon golf clubs, and giggled their way through the course. They'd both played terribly, making ridiculous shots to make each other laugh, until Zhou Mi got an accidental hole in one and Kyuhyun rewarded him with a kiss. After that, Zhou Mi changed tactics, playing as well as possible, looking for more rewards. 

They'd been so good together. Zhou Mi looked back at his life sometimes and wondered how he'd been such a fool. Why had he been so impulsive? 

"Actually," Zhou Mi amended, thinking that perhaps Kyuhyun might not appreciate him taking him on a date just to hold hands and make out, "There's this lake I saw one day when I was exploring the region. I want to take him to see that." 

"A lake?" Zitao brightened, sitting up straight before leaping off the bed. "Let me give you something!" He raced out of the infirmary and was back about 5 minutes later, panting after making the trip to his workshop and back. He thrust a backpack into Zhou Mi's arms. "Take these," he said, and then proceeded to give Zhou Mi instructions on how to use them. "I hope your date goes well," he said, so sincerely that Zhou Mi leant in to give him a hug. 

"Thank you," Zhou Mi replied, sneaking a look at Joonmyeon over Zitao's shoulder. "Maybe you'll get to go on a date soon too" 

 

*

 

Zhou Mi crawled out from under the rover and dusted himself off. 

"We're good to go," he announced to Kyuhyun, who was sitting on the ground with his knees drawn up, having been made to wait.

It was another week before they were on Kapteyn b's surface together, and while they'd told everyone else that they were going on an exploratory mission, it was actually the day for their date and Zhou Mi wasn't taking any chances with Kyuhyun's life. The rover inspected to his satisfaction, they both climbed in and Zhou Mi started the engine. 

"Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise," Zhou Mi told him, driving in the direction of the hills he'd visited with Ryeowook on the day of the dust storm. While up on the hills he'd noticed a small lake not far from there. It didn't take long until they arrived and soon they were hopping out of the rover, and Zhou Mi slung his bag over a shoulder. "Ready?" He held out his hand, half expecting Kyuhyun to ignore it. To Zhou Mi's surprise, Kyuhyun reached out, just grabbing the tips of Zhou Mi's fingers, and letting himself be led. 

It was a short walk, and as they came over a crest the lake came into view. It was surprisingly beautiful: unlike the other grey-blue waters that they had seen before, this was coloured a grey that was so dark it was almost black. It shimmered like onyx in the sun. They walked to the shore and sat down, Kyuhyun stretching out his legs and leaning his weight back on his hands. 

"This is a really beautiful spot," Kyuhyun commented. Zhou Mi was busy opening the backpack, and he pulled out a couple of objects. 

"Here." Zhou Mi handed Kyuhyun a controller before placing two small boats into the water. 

"What's this?" Kyuhyun looked at them curiously before giving the buttons on his controller some experimental presses. He laughed like a little kid when his boat took off, speeding across the water. 

"Hey! Bring that back here. We were going to race."

"No way! Try and catch me!"

They played with the boats for a while, Zhou Mi sending his one after Kyuhyun's in a desperate chase, eventually crashing them together by accident and looking horrified as it appeared to sink. Fortunately Zitao's toy had a surprise, and with a press of a different button it came flying back out of the water, bobbing up to the surface. 

When they'd finished and Zhou Mi had retrieved the toys from the lake, Kyuhyun commented, "That was fun. Thank you." His eyes were bright with laughter, shining inside his helmet. "I haven't had fun like that in a really long time."

"Me either." Life on Invenio was, while worthwhile, mostly serious and hard work. There wasn't much, or any, time for fun. "Take your glove off for a bit?" Kyuhyun looked at him questioningly but he followed Zhou Mi's lead, removing his right glove as Zhou Mi took off his left. Zhou Mi reached down, linking their hands together. The air temperature was cool, but the press of skin on skin would kept them warm for a little while. 

"We should head back," Zhou Mi said regretfully after they'd sat in comfortable silence for a while. Kyuhyun agreed, and they put their gloves back on, packed the boats back into Zhou Mi's bag and started the short walk back to the rover. 

Before they climbed in, Kyuhyun stopped him, giving him a quick nudge. "Take your helmet off - just for a second." Kyuhyun didn't wait for him to respond, reaching up to unclasp his own and pull it off his head. He waited until Zhou Mi did the same and then he leant forward, lightly brushing Zhou Mi's cheek with his lips. "Thanks for today. I had fun." 

Zhou Mi's cheek felt too warm for the coolness of the air that was surrounding them. And surely it was too soon to feel so lightheaded? It had only been a few seconds without his helmet on. Kyuhyun resecured his helmet and climbed into the rover. "Ready to go?"

Zhou Mi shook himself out of his daze, placing his helmet back on his head and taking several deep breaths to re-orientate himself as the oxygen kicked in. Inside, his heart was giddy. 

It felt like he'd been given a second chance - a second life. He pressed a hand to his chest to calm his heart, telling himself that he wouldn't mess it up this time. 

 

*

 

"You are SO gross," Jia commented as Zhou Mi delicately watered his plant. It was another Chinese alpine lily, in a standalone pot, that he'd been carefully nurturing over the past week since the date. It was on the brink of flowering, its bud gradually loosening over the past few days. "What is it, a token of your love or some crap?"

"Something like that," Zhou Mi agreed, not even put out by the teasing or insults. 

"Ugh, how can anyone put up with his googly heart eyes?" Fei asked Jia. "You're right - it is gross."

"If you don't want to be around me, you could always leave my lab," Zhou Mi told them. "The door is that way." He pointed in the general direction.

"Then who would insult you the way you deserve?" Jia asked snarkily. 

But Fei apologised. "Sorry. Ignore us. We're just jealous."

"We are?" Jia replied in mock outrage. 

"Yes, we are. Because our hearts are frozen and we've forgotten what it's like to be in love."

In love. Zhou Mi's hands stilled as the words brought a smile to his face, even as he heard Jia groan "googly heart eyes". Yes, even after all this time, he was still in love with Kyuhyun, only now he wasn't afraid of it. 

"There's no one… on the ship?" Zhou Mi asked them and they both recoiled in horror.

"What?!"

"NO, ewww!"

"Have you _seen_ the others??"

Zhou Mi laughed, rocking backwards. "Good point. The only good two are taken."

"I don't know about that," Jia muttered, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, didn't you call me here for a reason? I thought you had something you wanted to ask me?"

"Oh yeah." Zhou Mi wandered over to the desk where they were both sitting and started talking to Jia about nuclear reactions and how much material she had brought with her from Earth. 

At the end of the conversation, Jia said, "You're asking for a reason, aren't you?" 

"Maybe…"

"I know what you're up to," she said with a grin.

"It's not just me!' Zhou Mi protested. "Kyuhyun agrees." Just the thought of him brought a smile to Zhou Mi's face, making Jia groan "ewwwww" at his expression. 

"You'll need to convince Leeteuk," Fei added. She was sketching on a scrap of paper she'd grabbed on Zhou Mi's desk, drawing a forest in simple strokes of her pen. 

"It's a no-brainer."

"Still need to convince him," she pointed out, scribbling in the beginnings of a bird flying above the trees, then wisps of clouds. 

Eurgh. She was right and it sent Zhou Mi's mood plummeting. 

"Well," Jia said in an effort to console him. "Maybe it won't be that hard. You just need to show him the evidence, right?"

 

*

 

"I have something for you," Zhou Mi told Kyuhyun the next day, his hands hidden behind his back. He slowly brought them to the front, revealing the pot he'd carefully nurtured. It had bloomed overnight, a small flower with pink and white petals. 

Kyuhyun smiled when he saw it, carefully taking it from Zhou Mi's hands, the flower bobbing with the movement. "An alpine lily. Like the ones we saw on that trip - the one in the mountains, right?" 

He _did_ remember. 

"Thank you," Kyuhyun said as he cleared a place on his desk with one hand and setting the pot down before falling into his chair. "It's beautiful. You grew this before, didn't you?" Zhou Mi nodded in reply. So Kyuhyun remembered that too. "The first one was what made me start to forgive you," Kyuhyun said, stretching out his leg to hook it around Zhou Mi's calf, pulling him closer. "It made me think of the good times we'd had." 

Zhou Mi stumbled forward, an awkward duck on too long legs, and Kyuhyun reached for his hands. 

"You're still scared." A simple statement, not a question. Kyuhyun had the ability to look through him, see past his smiles and honking laughs, to find all the parts of himself that he tried to hide. 

"I don't want to mess this up again."

"Well," Kyuhyun squeezed his hands gently. "You can't run away this time - there's nowhere for you to go." Zhou Mi stared at him, horrified, until Kyuhyun laughed at his face. "Relax, I'm kidding." And then, as if to apologise for the teasing, more gently, "Come here." He cupped Zhou Mi's chin in a hand, drawing his face down, thumb running across the lower bow of Zhou Mi's mouth. 

Zhou Mi sighed softly, eyes fluttering to a close. "If I'm ever that stupid again, please knock some sense into me."

"I will, don't you worry about that." 

"I still don't deserve you." 

"We don't always get what we deserve," Kyuhyun told him. "But sometimes we get what we want." 

 

*

 

Zhou Mi spent ages putting his case together, brainstorming with Kyuhyun the best way to present the evidence to Leeteuk. Once he was satisfied he had everything together, he told Leeteuk he wanted to have a chat when he had a moment. 

"Well? You wanted to talk to me? What have you got?" Leeteuk asked as he entered Zhou Mi's lab, hand in his pocket. 

Zhou Mi laid all the evidence down on the table - piles and piles of data and documentation that they'd been collecting over the past few months. "Leeteuk," he said, trying to hold back his excitement. "Look - it's perfect," he babbled. "We could really do this, it's ripe for terraforming, Kapteyn b is perfect." He pulled out a graph from his sheath of papers, pointing at it. "I've spoken to Jia, we know the best spots to set off explosions, she's calculated the force required, Kyuhyun has calculated the amount of carbon dioxide that could be released and-" 

"No."

Zhou Mi drew his eyebrows together. Had he not explained it clearly enough? "Sorry, do you want me to show you the data?" He rifled through his file, but Leeteuk swept it off the table with one pass of his arm. 

"I said no." 

"But -"

"Are you not listening to me, Zhou Mi? I told you - I'll decide if it's right or not. The whole time you've only approached this from one angle, and I'm telling you that I'm not convinced by whatever you've collected." 

Zhou Mi was flabbergasted by his attitude. "But you haven't even -"

"You know what your problem is?" Leeteuk interrupted tersely. "You don't know when to leave something alone. I said no, and I'm the Commander, so drop it." 

 

*

 

"Well?" Jia and Kyuhyun accosted Zhou Mi afterwards. "What did he say?"

Zhou Mi lifted his head from his hands. "He said no."

Both Jia and Kyuhyun did a double take. "Didn't you show him the -?" Kyuhyun started to say before Zhou Mi cut him off.

"He wasn't interested! He didn't want to see anything. He just said no, and that he wasn't satisfied, that it wasn't a foregone conclusion, and then he pretty much told me that his mind was made up."

Zhou Mi could barely believe it. They'd put so much work together, had spent weeks analyzing the information and gathering the data, and Leeteuk hadn't even looked at it. It was becoming clearer that the problem wasn't with the data, or the proof, but fundamentally Leeteuk didn't agree with the concept. But what was the alternative? Was he expecting them to live on Invenio forever like rats in a cage? 

"What are you going to do?" Jia asked. 

Zhou Mi had an idea, but it was dangerous. He fidgeted uneasily, running his fingers through his hair in a nervous habit. "I could," he said, voice dropped to a low whisper. "Just do it…"

"Mi," Jia whispered, almost in horror. "What you're proposing is…"

"Mutiny," Kyuhyun finished for her. 

Zhou Mi looked at them both helplessly. "No, no," he tried to protest. Kyuhyun just raised his eyebrow at him, and Zhou Mi folded. "Okay, maybe you could call it that… but… what other option is there? I don't think I'll ever be able to convince him."

"I'm in," Kyuhyun said. Jia looked at them both and then rolled her eyes. 

"Fine, I'm in too. You can't do this without me, you'd make a total mess of it." 

Zhou Mi hadn't really expected either of them to back him up, much less agree to be part of it. He broke into a tentative smile. "Really? You're both with me?" 

Jia and Kyuhyun nodded. 

"If we fail… if Leeteuk finds out what we're planning…" Zhou Mi trailed off. He wasn't sure what Leeteuk was capable of, but he doubted that Leeteuk would treat anyone who crossed him mercifully. Leeteuk had a military background prior to being a spacepilot, before rising to the rank of commander, and Zhou Mi was pretty sure that he would come down hard on disobedience. Zhou Mi was completely willing to risk himself for this, but he wasn't sure about risking the others - not if they didn't fully understand the consequences of failure. 

"We know what we're getting into," Jia scoffed, as if Zhou Mi didn't even need to state the obvious. 

Kyuhyun added, "We need to get others on board." 

They started brainstorming a plan - who would already be on their side, who they could convince, and who they had to steer clear of.

"So we're agreed then?" Jia concluded after a brief discussion. "Zhou Mi will speak to Joonmyeon, Zitao and Yesung. I'll talk to Fei , Min and Hyelim, and Kyuhyun has Qian and Changmin."

"We're really doing this," Zhou Mi breathed, barely able to believe it, that it was becoming real and not some crazy idea. 

Kyuhyun nodded, briefly interlocking his fingers with Zhou Mi's when they brushed. "We're doing this." 

 

*

 

"I don't know," Joonmyeon said slowly after Zhou Mi had finished his speech. "That sounds…" he pursed his lips briefly before bringing his cup to his mouth. "Risky."

"It is," Zhou Mi agreed. "But I have the data, the evidence. It's do-able." 

"You know that's not what I'm talking about. I don't doubt the science, it's just.."

Zitao was leaning over Joonmyeon, chin hooked over his shoulder, and he reached over to steal Joonmyeon's drink. "Explain the last part to me again?" he asked Zhou Mi.

Zhou Mi went over his plan again, particularly the part that he needed Zitao's help with. He did his best to appeal to Zitao's vanity. "So you see, it really hinges on you." Which was true - he was a critical part of the plan. If Zitao didn't agree, it would be all but impossible. Behind his back, Zhou Mi crossed his fingers.

"Cool. Okay, I'll do it."

"Really?" Zhou Mi couldn't believe it, that it was that easy. He'd expected to be grilled a bit more, to have to persuade him, had thought that he might need to leverage Joonmyeon's friendship to get Zitao on board. But instead it was the other way round - Zitao was keen and Joonmyeon was the one who needed persuading. 

"Zitao, wait, you can't make up your mind so quickly," Joonmyeon was saying. 

"Why not? Zhou Mi's smart, he knows what he's talking about."

"Yeah, but, you haven't thought it through, you haven't thought of all the consequences. He's talking about going behind Leeteuk's back."

Zitao shrugged. "I trust Zhou Mi's opinion more." Then he added in explanation, "Zhou Mi's always been nice to me." 

Joonmyeon seemed exasperated. "You can't agree to things based on who's nicer to you."

Zitao was unapologetic and shameless, emptying Joonmyeon's mug while Joonmeyon was distracted. "I don't see why not." 

Zhou Mi interrupted them, leaning forward and placing his hand on Joonmyeon's knee to draw his attention. "If you don't want to be a part of this, I understand. If you're not, obviously I'd really appreciate it if you could at least keep it to yourself." 

Joonmyeon huffed. "It's not that." He tapped his fingers on his thigh in a nervous rhythm. "You really think this will work?"

Zhou Mi nodded. "I'm positive. It's the only way, Joonmyeon." He began again, giving Joonmyeon all the reasons he'd rehearsed but Joonmyeon shushed him a few seconds after he started. 

"Fine, fine. I support you." 

Zhou Mi beamed. Two down.

 

*

 

Yesung was even easier. Zhou Mi paid a visit to his lab after he left Joonmyeon and Zitao. Yesung was cleaning out the mice cages, removing the dirtied bedding material and replacing it with clean stuff. 

"You want to do what?" Yesung asked. 

Zhou Mi gave him the speech, the explanation, outlining the evidence but Yesung interrupted before he could get very far. "Don't tell me - and you want to keep this quiet from Leeteuk."

Zhou Mi cleared his throat. He hadn't quite gotten up to explaining that part. "Um. Yes." 

Yesung shrugged as he measured out a small amount of feed, dropping it into the food dish. "Okay. Count me in. Just tell me what you want me to do."

 

*

 

"Calling this meeting of the mutineers to order!" Jia said loudly, rapping her knuckles on the desk. 

"JIA," Zhou Mi hissed at her. "Don't say that." 

She grinned at him, unrepentant as always. "May as well call a spade a spade." Sometimes Zhou Mi got the impression that Jia didn't take it seriously, that it was just a game to her, but then he realised that it was just a front and she was as nervous as he was. 

With those they wanted signed up, they were meeting in Jia's lab to refine the plan as a group. Zhou Mi spread a map that Hyelim had produced across the desk, and the group huddled around it as Zhou Mi uncapped a marker, circling locations with quick strokes.

"When are we doing it?" Changmin asked.

"As soon as possible," Kyuhyun advised.

"Probably a month or two," Zhou Mi amended. "There's still a lot we need to do."

While he was probably the most keen to get things moving, he also didn't want to rush it. They needed to give Zitao time to build the drones, and just as importantly, for Jia to construct the bombs. Jia had the most stressful part at the moment. Not only did she need to create the bombs, but she also had to hide them. They weren't small, and there were going to be several, and in addition she needed to find a way of smuggling them to the surface. It was one reason they'd needed to recruit others into the plan, so they could divide the movements of materials amongst all of them. 

All of a sudden there was a loud knock on the door and Kangin rushed in, panting. He took a quick moment to catch his breath and then said, "I don't know what you guys are doing, but you probably want to know that Leeteuk is coming." 

Shit. Zhou Mi shared a worried look with Kyuhyun, scrunching up the map and shoving it into one of Jia's drawers. Jia cleared her computer screen and everyone tried their best to look nonchalant as Leeteuk walked in. Unfortunately, this just made them all look even guiltier. 

And Leeteuk knew something was up by the way he was looking at them all suspiciously. "What's going on?"

Zhou Mi tried desperately to think of a good excuse, but he was a terrible liar at the best of times, and even worse when put on the spot - and guilty. Apparently no one else was any better because there was silence until Kangin spoke. "You're spoiling it," he said from where he was slouched against the wall. 

"What am I spoiling?"

"We were planning something for you, a birthday surprise, but now you've gone and spoiled it." 

Leeteuk stared at Kangin. "Birthday surprise? How… how did you know it was coming up?"

Kangin tapped the side of his head. "Memory like an elephant." Then he wandered over, giving Leeteuk a gentle shove towards the door. "Can you leave now? We can't exactly discuss this with you here." 

After Leeteuk had left, Zhou Mi sighed in relief. 

"You guys need to be more discreet," Kangin told them all, shaking his head. "I don't know what you're doing, but I'm 100% sure Leeteuk won't like it." 

Kyuhyun tugged on Zhou Mi's arm, leaning in to whisper so only he could hear. "Can we trust him?" They shared a look before Zhou Mi finally nodded, opening the drawer to pull the map out and beckoning Kangin over.

"Well, after what happened, I think we can trust you. This is what's happening..."

"Oh, he is going to be LIVID," Kangin laughed after Zhou Mi had finished briefing him on the plan, rubbing his hands together in glee at the thought. "I'm in." 

 

*

 

Leeteuk's birthday celebrations were bittersweet, and Zhou Mi hadn't been aware of the depths of insincerity he was capable of until he was standing there lying directly to his Commander's face. 

As he wished Leeteuk a happy birthday, he thought that perhaps they weren't so different after all. They both believed so strongly in their goals that they were willing to do whatever it took to achieve them. 

There was guilt for a moment, but then Kyuhyun came up behind him, placing a hand on the small of his back, and Zhou Mi let it go. 

 

*

 

Over the next few weeks, preparations went smoothly - almost too smoothly for Zhou Mi's liking. The plan was detailed, structured, well thought out, and Zhou Mi worried constantly that someone would trip up. That someone might accidentally do or say the wrong thing. That Leeteuk would find out and end it. Or maybe, more worryingly, end them. 

Zhou Mi stayed away from the surface of Kapteyn b, afraid that Leeteuk might become suspicious if he flew down too often. There were many hushed meetings, held all over the ship, as they doled out the duties. 

It was nerve wracking but also exciting. And all too soon - it was time. 

 

*

 

"Wow," Zhou Mi said with a shiver. "This is actually happening." 

"Yup," Jia agreed, punching some numbers into her tablet, before looking up with a smile that seemed more grim than happy. "We're ready. Say the word, Mi."

They were gathered in Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun's lab - the three of them plus the ones they'd recruited to their side: Joonmyeon, Zitao, Changmin, Yesung, Amber, Fei, Min, Hyelim, Qian and Kangin. Kangin, while a last minute and unplanned addition, had proved himself to be particularly useful. 

Zhou Mi didn't know if he was excited or if he wanted to throw up. They'd spent the past couple of months preparing for this day, secretly planning and researching and setting things up. Zhou Mi looked around at them all. There was no turning back from this point, there'd be no explaining it away as anything less than it was: betrayal. Mutiny. 

Kyuhyun placed a hand on Zhou Mi's shoulder, squeezing gently. "No doubt, remember? We can only go forward." 

Zhou Mi nodded, reassured. They couldn't turn back now. "On my count, Jia." 

He said a slow count down from three, and when he reached 1, Jia hit the go button. Everyone's attention transfered to the row of screens they'd set up on the bench. Below them, on the surface of Kapteyn b, numerous drones took flight, transmitting the images up to the main ship. The drones flew on their pre-programmed flight paths, all heading to the southern polar cap. 

"How long?" Kangin asked, cracking his knuckles one by one before hunching towards the screen as they watched the images from the robots with interest. 

"Twenty minutes," Jia told him. 

It was a long, agonizing twenty minutes. No one talked, just waited for the drones to arrive at their destination. And then, when the time had passed, with absolutely no warning or countdown, one screen flashed white. And then another. And another. 

Zhou Mi and Jia both heaved a simultaneous sigh of relief while others cheered. They'd done it. 

The process to terraform Kapteyn b had begun.


	6. Denuo

"You fucking asshole!" Leeteuk swore, his fist colliding with Zhou Mi's jaw with a sickening crunch. "I know it was you, you fucker!" 

Kangin hurriedly pushed himself in between them, blocking Leeteuk from getting another punch in as Zhou Mi clutched his jaw, taking deep breaths to calm himself. He didn't want to give Leeteuk the satisfaction of showing exactly how much that hurt. They'd just left the lab when they bumped into Leeteuk storming down the corridor. As soon as he neared Zhou Mi he lashed out without warning, throwing him into the wall and punching him. Leeteuk knew what they'd done, no doubt having seen the mushroom clouds from the windows. 

Kangin was now holding Leeteuk back, preventing him from getting to Zhou Mi, and Joonmyeon had also gotten involved. 

"Let's go and discuss this," Joonmyeon was saying calmly, as if this was something that could be solved through words. Kangin forcibly made Leeteuk move, pushing him down the corridor and into the elevator. 

"Go to the mess," Joonmyeon said to Kangin just before the doors closed. "We'll take the stairs." 

By the time they had walked up the stairs, most of the crew had gathered in the mess. Leeteuk was sitting huffily in a chair, being watched over by Kangin who stood towering over him, quiet and menacing. When Zhou Mi entered, Leeteuk pointed his finger at him accusingly, trying to stand but Kangin pushed him back down with a heavy hand. 

Leeteuk struggled under Kangin's hand. "What the hell are you doing?" he asked Kangin angrily. "You should be stopping Zhou Mi. Let me go."

The ones not in the plan were looking around nervously, unsure of what was happening. Zhou Mi decided to fill them in. 

"Today, we started terraforming Kapteyn b." 

Those who didn't already know looked stunned. 

"What did you do?" Ryeowook asked in a small voice. "I thought we'd agreed that it was on hold. That we'd look at other options. "

Zhou Mi shook his head. "There are no other options. It's always been the best option for our survival." 

"It's not just about that though," Ryeowook protested. "There was more at stake - what right did you have to permanently change the planet? Who let you decide for all of us?" 

"Exactly! I never agreed!" shouted Leeteuk, face red. "I'm the Commander!"

Everyone ignored Leeteuk's outbursts. Zhou Mi thought about Ryeowook's questions. He was right - who let him decide for everyone? Just because he thought he was justified - did that make it okay? But then he met Kyuhyun's gaze, clear and steady, and his doubts disappeared.

"I looked at all the available options and made the choice that was best for all of us. I know you don't agree, Wook, and I'm sorry - I wish there was a way to make you comfortable with it. But…" Zhou Mi spread his hands and shrugged. "Here we are. It's started and there's no going back."

"And he didn't act alone," Jia piped up. "I was with him. We did it together."

Leeteuk stared at her, as if she'd lost her mind. "Traitor," he hissed.

"Shut up," Kangin said. "I was in it too." 

"Same."

"Me too."

One by one everyone admitted their role. 

"Fucking traitors," Leeteuk swore. "I should've tried harder to -," he spat, managing to stop himself before he could complete his sentence. 

Kyuhyun narrowed his eyes. "What was that?" he said as he made his way over to Leeteuk's side.

Leeteuk glowered up at him, but kept his mouth shut, not responding. Zhou Mi could see Ryeowook shifting uncomfortably in his chair, looking conflicted, and Zhou Mi suspected it wasn't about the terraforming. 

"Wook? Do you have something to say?" 

"It was Leeteuk. With the rover." 

"You little shit," Leeteuk threatened, and suddenly it all made sense. 

"Ryeowook, what do you know?" Zhou Mi asked, and he felt so calm inside it was frightening. 

Ryeowook looked at him, eyes big. "I'm sorry, it wasn't until afterwards that I -"

"What do you know?"

"He cut the brakes. And he was the one who sabotaged your work." 

The rest of the crew was silent, deeply bewildered as they listened to the exchange. Kangin quietly explained about the rover, and how it had been tampered with. "I inspected it myself, it's true," he finished. 

Zhou Mi took a deep breath. "In light of this information," he said to the whole group, "I'd like us to take a vote to remove Leeteuk from his position as Commander." Leeteuk was still shouting, accusing Ryeowook of lying, but everyone ignored him. "Everyone who agrees, please raise your hand." 

Plotting to terraform was one thing, but removing Leeteuk as Commander was another - even if Leeteuk had deliberately tried to hurt him. But slowly, gradually, everyone - apart from Leeteuk - raised their hand. 

"Then it's decided," Zhou Mi said, and despite the fact that he put it in motion he still felt nothing but sadness. "Leeteuk is no longer our Commander." 

 

*

 

Unsure on the best way to deal with Leeteuk, it was decided to lock him in the quarantine room for now. Perhaps they'd need a trial later, or maybe they'd set him free and hope that he didn't try to harm anyone again, but that was a decision for a later day. 

For now - Kapteyn b awaited. By now, the dust raised by the multiple nuclear explosions had cleared slightly. The explosions were only step one of the process, but as Invenio flew overhead it appeared that it had worked as planned, with a significant part of the polar cap experiencing melt. 

Once the planet had settled, Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun intended to head down to the surface to take further readings of the atmosphere. Zhou Mi also intended to plant some simple moss and lichens that he'd been engineering to kickstart the oxygen creation process. The others also had plans. Zitao and Qian had been working on a robot to construct a base for the planet, and Amber had identified spots that she wanted to investigate to mine for materials. The construction of the base would greatly assist in permanent settlement of the planet.

Passes by Invenio of Kapteyn b had already shown them several potential spots for their first permanent base. Zhou Mi was particularly keen on one spot in the middle of the planet, near its equator, and far away from the south pole and any potential radioactive fallout. The spot was a part of one of the main continents - a huge land mass about half the size of Earth. The spot that Zhou Mi liked was near the ocean - a large relatively flat expanse of land, marred by a smooth circular crater. Potentially, they could build their base over the crater, decreasing the amount of walls they would need to construct. Kyuhyun had already run the simulations, and the site was safe from sea level rise from the melting south cap, and it was a short rover ride to the ocean.

There was access to fresh water from a nearby river. Further from the crater, about several hours rover drive, the plain transformed into mountain ranges, tall and majestic, from which the rivers originated. 

Every time Invenio flew over, Zhou Mi thought that it could be home. 

 

*

 

Just as Zhou Mi was about to climb into his sleep capsule, Kyuhyun stuck his head out of his.

"Come up here for a second," he whispered, ducking back in. Zhou Mi climbed up to his capsule, crawling in. It was a tight squeeze with both of them in there, and Kyuhyun laid on his side, his back plastered to the wall. Zhou Mi maneuvered himself until he was lying down, facing him. 

"How's the jaw?" Kyuhyun asked, rubbing his thumb gently over the bruise where Leeteuk had decked him.

"Sore." Zhou Mi's eyes closed under his touch and he felt himself relax, all the tension of the day leaving his body. 

"We did good," Kyuhyun said quietly. "You did good. Are you happy?" 

He was, but at the same time - he wasn't. Zhou Mi wished that it had happened another way, that they could have achieved it without going behind anyone's back. Still, it was done now, and just like everything else on this mission, there was no going back. 

His eyes drooped in tiredness. It had been a long stressful day and all of a sudden it all caught up with him. He needed to head back to his own capsule but suddenly he was just so tired. 

"Stay here tonight," Kyuhyun suggested, draping an arm around his waist. He was warm, his breathing soft and calming. Zhou Mi's head tilted forward a little, and Kyuhyun placed a light kiss on his lips. "Sleep. There's more to be done tomorrow." 

 

*

 

With the way Joonmyeon burst into Zhou Mi's lab, it was immediately obvious something was wrong.

"Leeteuk's gone," he puffed. "I went to drop off some food but… the door was open. He's escaped!"

Surely that wasn't possible. Zhou Mi stood up, striding over to the door. "Show me."

When they arrived at the infirmary, Zhou Mi saw it was the truth. The door to the quarantine room where Leeteuk had been locked for the past week was wide open, and he wasn't inside. 

"Joonmyeon, you search this floor," he said. "Come to the control room if you find him." 

Zhou Mi made his way to the top deck, to the control room. Min had taken over all the flight controls since Leeteuk's demotion, and he wanted to be sure that Leeteuk hadn't tried to take back the ship. He was relieved to see that Min was alone and unharmed. She was surprised to hear that Leeteuk had escaped. "He hasn't been up here," she confirmed. 

Over Invenio's PA system, Zhou Mi called all crew members to the control room. They needed to locate Leeteuk quickly. After a week's incarceration he was likely to be incredibly pissed off and possibly dangerous. As the members arrived, Zhou Mi sent them off in pairs to start searching the ship. 

Ryeowook was one of the last to arrive, and when Zhou Mi explained that Leeteuk had escaped, he wasn't surprised at all. 

"Ryeowook, what have you done?" 

"I let him go," Ryeowook confessed. 

Zhou Mi stared at him disbelievingly. "Why?" He was so stunned he wasn't even angry. 

"I had to," Ryeowook said. "But it's okay, he won't hurt anyone, he was going to -"

Before he could finish his sentence, Changmin and Zitao returned from their search of the bottom deck. "Mi," Changmin said quickly, striding over and interrupting their conversation, "One of the emergency shuttles is missing." 

"-leave," Ryeowook finished. 

"Leave?" Zhou Mi took a step closer to Ryeowook, unaware that he was using his height to intimidate the smaller man. "Did he steal a shuttle? Where's he going? To Kapteyn b?" 

"I don't know where but not Kapteyn b," Ryeowook said in response. "Just… away."

"Wook," Zhou Mi exhaled, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. "There is no _away_." The emergency shuttles were exactly that - for emergencies when close to a planet. They had supplies and power for a month, at the most. They were only equipped for an emergency landing, not for long journeys through space. And even if Leeteuk was headed to the surface of Kapteyn b, it was too soon. The atmosphere wasn't fully formed yet, and the oxygen levels hadn't risen sufficiently for anyone to survive without breathing apparatus. 

"I couldn't leave him in there. I know he's done some really bad things but… but he deserved his dignity, he deserved a choice. He wanted to go home." 

"Home? Earth?" Surely Leeteuk hadn't taken the shuttle to head towards Earth? It had taken Invenio 150 years to fly the distance - there was no chance that Leeteuk would make it. It was madness. "How could you let him leave like that?" 

"You know what, Zhou Mi? I'm not sorry," Ryeowook said, drawing himself up and now steadfast in his opinion. "I did what I thought was best - just like you did. You're not the only person who can believe in the rightness of your actions." 

 

*

 

"He's really gone, huh?" Kyuhyun asked when he entered the control room. Zhou Mi was standing at the window, staring out. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. 

"Yeah," Zhou Mi said. They'd finished searching the ship, and it appeared that it was true - Leeteuk had stolen one of the emergency shuttles and left. 

"I guess it's for the best," Kyuhyun mused. "What would we have done with him?"

"I don't know," Zhou Mi confessed. All he knew was that any options he came up with didn't include sending Leeteuk to his death. He pressed his hands to his eyes, feeling ill. "Was I wrong?" 

Kyuhyun slung a comforting arm across Zhou Mi's shoulders. "No, I don't think so. But what do you think? Out here, we can only judge ourselves. And you're fair, rational - can you justify it to yourself? Can you sleep at night?" 

Could Zhou Mi sleep comfortably knowing the things he'd done? He looked out into space, to the stars burning in the darkness, and decided: _yes_. But that was part of human nature, wasn't it? The ability to self-justify, to rationalise away unethical decisions? Even after Zhou Mi left Kyuhyun, he managed to tell himself that he'd _had_ to. 

"Maybe Leeteuk justified his actions to himself too." Maybe Leeteuk could sleep because he told himself he was doing it for a greater good. Maybe he avoided thinking about it. They'd never know now. 

"But the difference is, you didn't try to harm anyone. You did what you did for our survival - all of us." 

"Why do you think Leeteuk did it? Everything?"

As a scientist, Zhou Mi always attempted to look for logical, for rationality, for order even in the disorder. But people weren't rational, they weren't logical. They did things that didn't make sense, they did things that hurt themselves, hurt others, they believed in things that were obviously false, they believed in things that truths that were impossible. People's motivations were complex and yet simple, hidden and yet laid open for others to see. 

"Maybe for the same reason you left me," Kyuhyun told him. _Fear_. 

Fear made people do crazy illogical things - things that were senseless and hopeless. 

Zhou Mi turned to Kyuhyun. He was looking out the window, watching Kapteyn b as Invenio flew above it. 

"I missed you. When I left. I was… lost." He watched as Kyuhyun shook his head, sighing a little. "I was able to rationalise it but in the end I was just lying to myself. I was wrong." 

"I know. We don't have to talk about this. It's in the past." 

"I don't deserve your friendship again, not after what I did. I don't deserve _you_. But I'm really glad you're here, and I promise to do my best not to fuck it up again." 

"You've always been the most intelligent person I know," Kyuhyun told him. "But you're also the dumbest." He squeezed Zhou Mi's shoulders before pulling away. "Come on, aren't you on cooking duty? Fei is looking for you." Just before he left the control room, he turned back. "It took a while but… I'm glad I'm here too. With you." 

 

*

 

"So Leader, what's next?" Changmin asked as he plopped himself into a chair at the table. 

Zhou Mi stared at him. "I'm not - don't call me that!"

"But aren't you?" asked Luna. Now that Leeteuk had disappeared, the crew _had_ been coming to Zhou Mi on more and more issues, but it was the first time anyone had called him Leader. The title sounded awful to Zhou Mi's ears. 

"No, of course I'm not," Zhou Mi spluttered. The last thing he wanted was to be seen as the group's leader. He was just a scientist. Admittedly, he'd been a lynchpin in the project (mutiny, the guilty part of his brain helpfully supplied) but he hadn't done it to overthrow Leeteuk. He'd done it because it was the rational choice, the best solution for the group's survival. 

It was true though - the crew did need someone in charge. They were too separate, too different, could too easily be pulled in all sorts of directions without someone to act as a rudder. And since Zhou Mi was responsible for the current power vacuum…

"I propose we hold a vote," Zhou Mi suggested. "I'm not the best person to lead this group, but I know someone else who is." He snuck a glance at the person he was thinking of. "Joonmyeon."

"What?" Joonmyeon jolted in surprise, jostling the table and almost upsetting the glasses set on top. "Why me?"

Zhou Mi addressed the rest of the group. "Joonmyeon is intelligent, rational, emphatic. He can represent all of us but still be relied on to be firm and fair. I nominate Joonmyeon." 

"I agree," Zitao added, and Zhou Mi smiled because he knew that Zitao would back him on this. "I second Zhou Mi's nomination."

"Are there any others?" Zhou Mi asked. "Does anyone want to self nominate?" The room was quiet. "Does anyone disagree with Joonmyeon becoming the leader? There's no penalty for dissent. We're all adults here - if anyone has any reservations, let's discuss them." 

Again the room was silent.

Zhou Mi then asked Joonmyeon, "Do you accept the nomination?"

Joonmyeon cleared his throat, swallowing a little nervously. "I'm flattered by your trust in me…" For a moment Zhou Mi was worried that he was going to decline, but then he added, "Yes."

"Okay." Zhou Mi clapped once decisively. "Please raise your hand if you vote for Joonmyeon to take the lead."

One by one, everyone raised their hands. Zhou Mi smiled, beamed at them all.

"It's unanimous. Joonmyeon is our leader - the first leader of Kapteyn b."

Zitao started applauding, and everyone followed suit until the room was echoing with applause. Joonmyeon looked both pleased and slightly teary eyed. "Thank you. I don't let you down." 

"We know," Zhou Mi told him as Zitao slung an arm around Joonmyeon's shoulders, grinning at him in delight. "We know."

"I have a proposal for our first Leader," Soryong said loudly so he could be heard above the cheering. At Joonmyeon's questioning look, he said, "We should rename the planet. Make it ours."

"Yes!"

"That's a great idea."

The crew started tossing out ideas - some stupid, some inspired - while Joonmyeon frantically tried to scribble them all down. 

There was a lull when it appeared everyone had finished, when Liyin spoke up. "This is our second chance, isn't it? How about Denuo?"

Denuo - anew, afresh, again. There were slow nods as the crew members took it in. 

"Don't tell me we're going to have a unanimous decision on this too," Changmin said with a chuckle. "We're making it too easy for our new leader."

They all knew that it wouldn't always be this way - that on the horizon there was bound to be major disagreements and disharmony, but for now, for tonight, it was nice to feel united as a group. 

But Joonmyeon, fair as always, needed to confirm what everyone was thinking. "Does everyone agree?" he asked, looking around. It appeared that everyone did. 

"Denuo it is then," Joonmyeon confirmed. "Welcome to Denuo."

 

*

 

"What's this meeting about?" Jia asked Zhou Mi as they entered the control room. Zhou Mi couldn't shed any light on it, just that Joonmyeon had suddenly called a group meeting, saying that he had something serious to discuss. 

When Jia and Zhou Mi arrived, everyone else was already there, and Joonmyeon started.

"I have something really important to talk to you about," Joonmyeon said, looking around at all of them. "Do you remember the day we were all revived? When Leeteuk sent a message back to Earth?"

Everyone nodded. Of course they remembered that day, the first official day of their mission.

Joonmyeon continued, "After looking through the ship's logs, I've since discovered that he never actually sent the message." 

"What does that mean for us?" Liyin asked in that quiet direct way of hers. She never really spoke much but she knew how to get to the heart of the matter. 

"That's why I've called this meeting," Joonmyeon explained, giving her a smile. "I want to ask you all - do we send Earth a message, or… do we stay silent?" 

If they sent the message, one day others might join them. If they stayed silent, it would be just them - forever. 

"If we send them a message," Changmin spoke out, "we have no way of knowing who would come or what kind of people they would be. They could come with the intention of taking over, of destroying everything we've worked so hard for."

"But do we have an obligation?" Min argued. "They're the reason we're here in the first place. We made an agreement."

"There's no agreements out here," Qian added. "We have to decide based on what's best for us. It's too big a risk to take."

The group argued back and forth for a while, throwing out reasons both for and against. Mostly Zhou Mi stayed silent - he was strong in his own position. Out here, so far away from Earth, they could only rely on themselves. Their own survival was paramount.

After a while, when it appeared that the debate wasn't going to end by itself, Joonmyeon held up his hands, bringing everyone into silence. 

"This is a really important decision," he said. "And while I'd like a unanimous vote, I think that's unrealistic. I do think that we need an overwhelming majority though."

"And what if you don't get an overwhelming majority?" Ryeowook asked. "What if we can't decide?"

"Then I'll decide and I won't tell you which way I've chosen. Chances are, none of us will be alive to know for sure anyway." 

"That's stupid," Ryeowook scoffed but others around the room nodded, apparently satisfied with that route of action.

That decided, Joonmyeon called for a vote. "All those in favour of sending a message to Earth - raise their hands." Everyone glanced around the room, waiting, but no one moved. Zhou Mi was surprised to see that even Ryeowook stayed still. He'd been convinced that he would vote the other way. 

The choice was obvious, but Joonmyeon decided to make it official anyway. "All those in favour of staying silent - raise their hands." 

Without any hesitation, the entire remaining crew of Invenio raised their hands, thereby agreeing unanimously to cut themselves off from Earth - forever. 

 

*

 

It took several years for the atmosphere in Kapteyn b to settle. 

The crew lived on Invenio in the meantime, during which they came to an agreement on a location for their permanent settlement, ultimately landing on the spot that Zhou Mi was personally fond of. 

Their base on the planet was created using two 3D printing robots. Qian and Zitao set an inflatable dome over the crater, which provided the support structure for construction. Over several months, running on solar power, the robots collected regolith and used the planet's soil to layer over the dome, creating a protective shell. 

After it was complete, Luna, in charge of construction, stepped in to complete it, fitting out the inside, installing skylights, and in tandem with Fei, wiring it up so it had power. Once complete, their new base contained a large central room, from which all the other rooms radiated - a kitchen, two bathrooms, and 12 bedrooms. 

Laboratories and workshops had been moved off from the main base. Zitao put his robots to work creating a series of smaller buildings not far from the main settlement for work, storage and food production. 

While the build happened, Zhou Mi worked hard on his plant research, seeding the planet with simple algae and lichen, plants that were capable of taking all the nutrients they required from the air and water. It took several rounds and many frustrating failures before he found one that was able to grow in the different conditions of the new planet. 

Eventually though, they were ready to move permanently to the surface.

Min and Soryong finished their pre-flight status check, completing their monitoring of Invenio's systems, before Min twisted in the captain's chair to look at everyone sitting in their assigned seats. She had been elevated to flight captain after Leeteuk's departure and was now in charge of directing all flights and launches. 

"Everyone secure?" After being responded with "yes" she twisted back to Soryong and they began retrofiring Invenio's engines, providing an initial deceleration to lower the craft to a suborbital trajectory. They would need to orientate the spacecraft so the heat shields were presented forwards towards the atmosphere, protecting against the high temperatures and friction their entry would create. 

"Suborbit reached," Soryong confirmed. 

"Hang on everyone."

This was it, they were taking Invenio out of orbit to land on Denuo. Unlike their lander, Invenio wasn't designed for entry and reentry. To be able to land, parts of the ship would need to be detached upon entry with the components separated to control the fall down. The only part that would be easily recovered was the top section that contained all the habitable areas. It would be years - if at all - before they would have the ability to rebuild Invenio for space flight. Perhaps they would never try, letting her finally rest after the long journey. They had all agreed though - if they were to live on Denuo, they needed to bring Invenio down. It was partly symbolic and partly pragmatic. They needed to draw that line in their minds, to know that there was no going back, but also they required all the instruments and supplies that Invenio held.

The entire ship rattled and shuddered as she pierced the atmosphere, plummeting down quickly. Min and Soryong had sweat beading on their foreheads as they struggled to control the fall.

"Shield detached," Soryong confirmed as he decoupled the whipple shield, letting it fall away from the main ship. This was followed by the gravity arms, and then the lower part of Invenio, leaving only the habitable pod.

They were still falling far too quickly, the forces pressing them into their seats. Parachutes were deployed, jolting them as they opened, slowing the descent. From there, they glided slowly into the ocean near their base, landing with a splash close to the shore.

Joonmyeon, Changmin and Kangin were waiting for them on the surface, and through the windows of the command pod they could see them waving on the shore. Once the pod had stopped rocking, they waded into the water with ropes, tying them tightly around it. The other end of the ropes were secured to several of the rovers and they used the vehicles to drag the pod on to land. 

Through the window they could see Joonmyeon giving them a double thumbs up, and that was their cue to release the door lock and pile out.

"Hi everyone," Joonmyeon beamed. "Welcome home." 

 

*

 

After so long in space, it felt weird to be grounded. It took Zhou Mi a while to become accustomed to the stability of the planet, so used to the spinning of Invenio. And Denuo was _quiet_ , incredibly so, particularly in comparison to being on the spaceship. There was always noise on Invenio due to the background hum of the air circulation and other life support systems, but Denuo was almost silent, and any noise that the crew created travelled much further than they were used to. 

"Shhhh," Zhou Mi said as he pulled Kyuhyun into their room. By now everyone was aware of their new (old) relationship, and they had been given one of the rooms at the end. All of the rooms were sparse. They had removed most things of value from Invenio, but all that was in the bedrooms so far was bedding, which had been tossed in the corner. 

Kyuhyun threw himself into the bedding, reaching up for Zhou Mi's hand to pull him down as well. "Shhhhh," he mocked as Zhou Mi left out a squeak, and Zhou Mi poked him, fingers digging into his side, in retaliation before relenting as Kyuhyun squirmed. 

"Hey."

"Hey," Kyuhyun replied, slightly breathless from the tickling, propped up on an elbow. 

"We're finally here." 

"Yeah." 

"I love you." Kyuhyun's smile grew as wide as Zhou Mi's, his eyes sparkling brighter than any star and Zhou Mi wondered why he'd ever wanted to see the universe when it was right here in front of him, all the beautiful possibilities that had always been within reach if he had only opened his eyes. 

 

*

 

Zhou Mi flinched a little as the needle pierced his skin. Yesung pressed a small piece of sterile cotton to it, before placing on a bandaid. "I'll talk to him," Zhou Mi promised after it was secured, pushing his sleeve back down. 

"Thanks," Yesung said, discarding the needle and removing his gloves. "I understand why, but - " He made a face. "I feel like I'm to blame."

"It's not your fault. And - I'll try."

Zhou Mi left the main habitat, walking the short distance to Ryeowook's home. He'd moved out months ago, supposedly so he could be closer to the food production hall, but Zhou Mi knew that wasn't the entire truth. 

He found Ryeowook in the middle of the production hall. It was a duplicate of the room Ryeowook used to have on Invenio, except on a much larger scale - a gigantic hall of frames to grow fruit, vegetables and lab-meat.

The hall was enclosed so they could control the climate and temperature. Although the roof was clear, there were also mirrors and artificial light lamps to intensify the sunlight. Denuo's sun was different to that of Earths, emitting a different spectrum and not as intense. 

When Zhou Mi entered Ryeowook was looking upwards, watching his robots work. After building the hall, he'd worked with Zitao to create robots to assist with the maintenance and harvesting, and there were several robots crawling over the frames, busy watering and spraying. 

"It's looking good," Zhou Mi commented. 

Ryeowook smiled briefly, not taking his eyes off his robots. "I'm sure you haven't come to make small talk."

Once upon a time they'd been friends, but nowadays their relationship was strained, having never fully recovered from the choices they'd both made. 

"You're not taking the longevity treatment," Zhou Mi said, and something flickered across Ryeowook's face. Although their natural lifespan was about 100, they didn't know how their time in space may have affected them. Yesung had already started to give them all the treatment, well before they actually needed them, to help their bodies heal any potential radiation damage.

"No," Ryeowook replied simply. "You know how I feel about it." High above them a multi limbed robot plucked berries from a bush.

"Is there any way I can change your mind?"

Ryeowook finally tore his gaze away from the robots, giving Zhou Mi a small smile. "What do you think?" Zhou Mi knew the answer was no - knew that it would be impossible even before he opened his mouth - but he had to at least try.

"You know what it means, don't you?" 

"Of course." The robot he'd been watching completed its harvesting, moving to the ground. Ryeowook detached the crate of berries it had collected, pressing a few buttons to send it back along another row. He handed the crate over to Zhou Mi to carry and they walked out of the hall together. Ryeowook had a stack of crates on a trolley, each containing different vegetables, at the front of the hall. He took Zhou Mi's crate and placed it on top. The crate interlocked with the others so it was stable for travel. "You can take these back to the main habitat." Zhou Mi knew that he was being dismissed but he couldn't leave so easily, not without giving it one last try.

"I wish you'd reconsider.' 

"I wish you'd reconsidered before you made a choice that affected all of us." 

Zhou Mi swallowed a sigh. It always came back to this. The gulf between them was too wide to be closed. "What kind of life would we have had? Living in a tin can? Living underground? A glassed dome forever?" 

"Do you know how old this place is, Mi?" Ryeowook asked him. "It's billions of years old - it existed even before Earth was anything. And we came along and changed it." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that." 

"But it didn't exist in the state we found it for all that time. We don't know what happened in its history. It changed and evolved, and now it's evolving again. There was no life here, and now there is." 

"You _think_ that there was no life. But there may have been. You didn't take enough time to fully find out. You just waltzed in, wreaked havoc, just like humans have been doing on Earth for centuries and we don't even KNOW what we've lost. " 

They were going around in circles again. They'd had this argument countless times, over and over, circling around and never meeting in the middle. 

"Wook," Zhou Mi said, aiming for gentle because they were both getting heated. "You're a gardener. If you were given a vacant plot, what would you do with that opportunity? Would you plant a garden, see it green and lush? Or would you leave it empty and dead?"

"That's a terrible analogy." 

"It probably is," Zhou Mi agreed, although it made perfect sense to him. Before they'd arrived, before it was Denuo, Kapteyn b was a dead rock. Perhaps Ryeowook saw beauty in that, something worth keeping, but for Zhou Mi it was an opportunity. "But for me, I would chose to plant. I chose life. And I wish that you would chose life too."

Ryeowook scoffed. "You romanticize things. And you're so damn sure, you never think that you might be wrong. You were wrong to terraform without agreement from everyone. You were _wrong_ and you can't even admit it." 

Thinking about events of the past lead Zhou Mi to recall something that took him a long time to realise. "How did you know it was the brakes? Kangin and I never told anyone about it. And about the sabotage to my lab?" 

Even though it had been years, Ryeowook still remembered, and the corner of his mouth lifted in something that wasn't a smile. "Leeteuk told me." 

Zhou Mi wondered. "Did he?"

"Of course he did," Ryeowook replied easily. "How else would I know?" He looked in the direction of the main habitat. "Besides, if I wanted to kill you, I could've easily done so these past few years. Don't you think?" He tapped the crates, drawing Zhou Mi's attention to them. "You should get these to the others." 

 

*

 

"Are you ready?" Kyuhyun asked Zhou Mi. "You always take so long."

"I just like to be prepared," Zhou Mi protested, still ticking items off his checklist while Kyuhyun tapped his foot impatiently. 

"We're READY, we've been ready for DAYS, weeks even, come onnnnn," Kyuhyun whined cutely. He wasn't exaggerating - Zhou Mi had been planning this trip for over a month, writing lists upon lists: equipment they needed, the amount of kms they would travel each day, their route, and emergency plans. It wasn't his fault that he was a details person, plus he didn't want to chance Kyuhyun's safety. 

They were heading into the mountains, on a trip together, just the two of them. Supposedly the trip was another exploratory expedition, but it meant a bit more than that to Zhou Mi. After all the drama of the past, things had finally settled and Zhou Mi was looking forward to experiencing an unexplored part of Denuo with him. In many ways, Zhou Mi was hopelessly sentimental. 

Zhou Mi finished marking items off his list, satisfied that they had everything, to which Kyuhyun threw up his hands, yelling, "FINALLY." They each shouldered a hiking backpack, walking out of the base to their rover and tossing their bags in the back. 

Joonmyeon was waiting by the rover to farewell them. 

"Stay safe," he said to them both, giving them a quick hug. "You have everything? You have the radios? Flares? Extra oxygen?" 

Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. "Please don't start, he's checked everything several times over. We're never going to leave at this rate." Zhou Mi disregarded his complaints, reaching up to wrap a scarf tightly around Kyuhyun's neck. 

In the years after the atmosphere had thickened, the temperature on Denuo had also risen, although it was still mild. Because the sun was so small in comparison to Earth's sun, it would never be a very hot place to live, but it wasn't uncomfortable. In the mountains it was also likely to be colder, so Zhou Mi ignored Kyuhyun's protests at his fussing and handed his boyfriend a pair of gloves. 

"We're not leaving until you put these on." 

"I'm not a child," Kyuhyun grumbled, but he put them on anyway. He held up his gloved hands. "Happy? Can we go?"

Finally satisfied, Zhou Mi climbed into the rover, buckling himself in. He started the engine, and finally they were off, waving farewell to Joonmyeon.

Their route took them through the plains, following the river upstream until, after several hours, they reached the base of the mountains. There Zhou Mi stopped the rover, parking it. They would be leaving it there and going on foot the rest of the way. 

But before that, they took a moment to eat lunch. Naturally Zhou Mi had factored this into their schedule, but what he hadn't factored in was Kyuhyun. 

"We're not eating by the rover," Kyuhyun scoffed. "Come on." He pulled on his backpack and trekked off, not even waiting for Zhou Mi. He stopped on a ridge that overlooked the river, dropping his pack to the ground while Zhou Mi hurried to catch up. When Zhou Mi joined him, Kyuhyun reached out for his hand, yanking him to the ground. 

"Look." 

From here they were slightly elevated above the plains, with the river running below them on their left. Denuo was still mostly rocky, but there were patches of green that had started to take hold, scattered around them. Simple plants like algae, lichen and moss had taken off well, and Zhou Mi had also had some success growing other small plants - mini shrubs and grasses - but was still working on larger flora like trees. 

The view was beautiful in its own way. In some ways it resembled Earth, enough to give Zhou Mi a sense of nostalgia, and yet in another way it was completely alien. The sky had changed colour with the changing of the atmosphere, but it wasn't the sky blue of Earth, instead it was a bluish grey, and the landscape, dominated by reddish-brown rocks interrupted with splashes of green, was distinctly non-terrestrial. 

Even the sounds of the planet was different. Back on Earth, it was never truly quiet, the air filled with the buzz of insects, the chirping of birds, the way the wind whistled through the trees. Huge parts of Denuo were noiseless, completely silent, although from where they sat they could hear the roar of the river as it flowed beneath them. 

It was so special. Zhou Mi couldn't believe that - after everything - he was sitting here with Kyuhyun, sharing this with him. His heart squeezed tightly in his chest.

"Mi, are you crying??" Kyuhyun asked, half laughing as he pulled him into a hug. 

"No!" Zhou Mi lied. 

"Why are you crying? What happened?" 

"I'm just really -" Zhou Mi waved an arm around, gesturing to the landscape. "Touched. That we're here together, and -" his words cut out as he choked on a sob. 

"You are so dumb," Kyuhyun told him fondly, letting Zhou Mi bury his face into his neck. "Why do I love you?"

"I don't know, I'm stupid," Zhou Mi replied, words muffled. Kyuhyun teased him lightly, eventually making Zhou Mi laugh and forget his emotional outburst. 

They ate lunch, fortunately one that Kyuhyun had prepared, and laid out in the sun for a while. Zhou Mi surprised himself by not insisting that they keep to their schedule as soon as they'd finished eating, content to allow some flexibility in his plans for at least one day. 

After a while Kyuhyun stood, dusting his trousers off and reaching a hand out to pull Zhou Mi to his feet. They shouldered their bags and began the trek into the mountains. Initially it was an easy walk with a gentle slope, but after a while it grew more challenging as the steepness increased and there were parts where they had actually had to pull themselves up. 

Before night fell, they found a flat ridge on which they could stop for the night. Zhou Mi had packed some lightweight fire bricks, a new invention of Qian's, and he used them to start a small fire. They laid tucked up in their sleeping bags next to it, the fire dying down to a soft glow that let off a comforting warmth. 

Above them, the night sky of Denuo shimmered with stars, so many that Zhou Mi could watch them for weeks and never get bored. They could also see the other planet that orbited Denuo's sun, Kapteyn c, shining brightly. This planet was even larger than Denuo - seven times the size of Earth - but was so far from the sun that it was too cold to support life. However, the crew had plans to visit Kapteyn c in the future, to see if there was anything useful they could glean from the other planet. But that was far in the future - decades away. For now, all Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun could do was watch it as it drifted high above them, large in the sky.

Kyuhyun shuffled closer in his sleeping bag, until they were cuddled together, his head pillowed on Zhou Mi's shoulder, and there was nowhere else in the universe that Zhou Mi wanted to be other than right here. 

They spent a couple of weeks like this - just the two of them exploring the mountain region, sleeping out under the stars, entirely, entirely alone - living and breathing this world that they'd created together. 

Never in his wildest dreams had Zhou Mi ever thought that this was where he would end up, that this could possibly be his destiny. Even the craziest fates that his imagination thought up as a little boy, it could never have compared to this. He'd grown up having a distant goal of exploring the universe, of leaving the little blue and green sphere of Earth to visit places that humanity had not yet conquered. He'd never seen that, perhaps, he could be standing on an entire new world next to the man he loved, the man he didn't deserve, the man who was his equal in every single way. But that was the failing of his imagination and sometimes, reality was better than dreams.

The end of the trip came upon them quickly as their food supplies dwindled, and soon it was time to head back to the base. They took an entire day to descend the mountains, treading carefully, the hike down on loose rock rather more dangerous and arduous than the climb up. 

As they neared the bottom, they were greeted by a small patch of green grass, growing on the sunny side of the mountain in a slight nook, shielded from the wind. Up in the mountains the foliage that Zhou Mi had seeded the planet with had yet to take root, although lichen and moss was beginning to make a steady climb upwards. 

Zhou Mi dropped to his knees by the patch of grass, drawn by something he'd caught in the corner of his eye. 

"Kyuhyun!" he said, his voice brimming with supressed excitement as he cupped his hands around the green. "Look at this!" 

Kyuhyun crouched down to investigate, smiling widely when he saw it: a tiny yellow flower, barely larger than a thumbnail, something that would be considered a weed back on Earth. But here… here it meant promise, potential, success. 

Life.


	7. Epilogue

Life, as it always does, evolved. 

And Denuo, and the crew of Invenio, evolved with it. 

As the planet settled into a rhythm, as plants finally spread across the land, turning the once red-brown rocky surface into wide swaths of green, those who remained of the First 20 moved past thinking about their own survival and started thinking about the survival of their species. 

For Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi, it was Kyuhyun who brought the topic up. They had moved out to their own building - not far from the main habitat - a couple of years ago. One day, after a group meeting, Kyuhyun took Zhou Mi's hand as they walked. 

He said, "What do you think about children?" 

Zhou Mi's head whipped around so fast he almost gave himself whiplash, but Kyuhyun's eyes were firmly focussed ahead of them. "Children? Us?"

It wasn't that strange a question really. Some of the others had already had kids, creating them from the frozen embryos and sperm that Invenio had carried from Earth for genetic diversity. Rather than having them naturally the children were conceived and grown in artificial wombs. There were seven so far, and all the adults doted on them.

Jia and Fei had been the first, although Zhou Mi had blundered his way through the conversation when they'd first told him. 

"Are you two? Together??" he'd asked, unable to keep the shock out of his voice. They were close, anyone could see that, but he hadn't thought… 

But Jia put him in his place, telling him that they were like sisters - and there was no one else that she trusted more to help her raise children. "There's more types of love than just romantic love, Zhou Mi," she told him wisely, patting him on the head like he was a child. "Out here, a family can be however we chose to define it." 

And now Kyuhyun wanted to them to have a family.

"Of course us. Who do you think I mean?"

"Are you sure?" It was something that Zhou Mi did want - sometime in the future - but he didn't know if he was ready. "You're not scared?" 

They had reached their house, a cozy simple residence surrounded by a garden that Zhou Mi had painstakingly planted. It wasn't much to look at by Earth standards, but it was an amazing creation on this planet. Zhou Mi had even managed to get flowers growing - only small ones at this stage. The lack of insects meant that flowering plants hadn't taken off on the rest of the planet - the single one they'd seen on that hike was an anomaly - but Zhou Mi persisted with his, hand pollinating them every morning. 

Kyuhyun stopped at their door, giving him a bemused expression. "After everything we've done - look at where we're standing right now! This is what scares you?" 

"Yes," Zhou Mi pouted. 

Kyuhyun opened the door, turning back to say to him before he entered, "I'm not scared if it's with you."

"Kyu!" Zhou Mi complained, stomping his feet as he followed him into their house. "You can't say things like that and then leave me out here! Come back here and let me hug you!" 

 

*

 

Zhou Mi peered into the womb that held their children: twins - a boy and a girl. "Oh my god, this is really happening." His heart rate was spiking, trying to beat its way out of his chest, and he couldn't breathe. "Help me, I think I need oxygen." He collapsed into a nearby chair.

"Is he always this dramatic?" Liyin asked Kyuhyun, her eyes laughing as she covered her mouth to hide her amusement. "Calm down there Papa Zhou, all you need to do is sit there and breathe. Do you really want an oxygen mask?"

Zhou Mi, his head in his hands, released one to wave at her weakly. "No, I'm good. I'm good. I'm fine, everything's fine, oh my god this is really happening."

"You two _did_ discuss this beforehand, right?" Liyin asked Kyuhyun. She was only teasing - they had both been present during every step of the process - watching as Liyin fertilised the eggs before implanting them into the artificial womb. They were also there every day together, watching the cells develop into embryos, fetuses, babies. And now they were here for the final stage. 

"He's just being a coward," Kyuhyun replied, but there was affection in his voice. He pet Zhou Mi's hair, hand sliding down to rub the back of his neck. "You okay there, sunshine?" 

"This is scarier than anything I've ever done in my life. How are you so calm?"

Kyuhyun ignored him, keeping an eye on Liyin as she gradually emptied the fluid contained in the womb. She reached in to pull one of the twins - the boy - disconnecting the artificial umbilical cord, and clearing the baby's mouth and lungs. Zhou Mi was _terrified_ and when, eventually, the room was filled with a baby's wailing the terror didn't dissipate. After a quick clean up and a swaddle, she handed him over to Kyuhyun to take care of the girl. 

She repeated the process, and not long after the room was again filled with crying - except this time the baby was joined by Zhou Mi who had tears unashamedly dripping down his face. I'm just sympathy crying, that's all, he told himself. 

Liyin handed the baby over to him, who held her gingerly, away from his body. 

"What if I drop her???" Zhou Mi asked in panic, clutching his newborn daughter in his hands. She was _tiny_ , seemingly impossibly so, her face all wrinkled and the smattering of hair on her head wet and matted. 

"Don't," Liyin told him matter of factly, leaning in to tuck the corner of the blanket back from where it had come loose. From next to him, Kyuhyun grinned, their baby boy held securely in the crook of his arm. He looked like a natural, like he'd done this a thousand times.

"Let's have a couple more," Kyuhyun told him, reaching over to stroke their daughter's face with a finger. 

"Already??" 

"Why not?" 

"Can we make sure I don't accidentally harm these ones first? What if I leave them somewhere and forget about them." 

Kyuhyun nudged him gently with his elbow, making Zhou Mi squeak. Zhou Mi adjusted his hold, trying to emulate Kyuhyun's secure casualness, and the girl let out a little noise of contentment as he cradled her close to his body. 

Zhou Mi's heart melted: leaking all the way down his body and into the floor, and Kyuhyun leaned his head on Zhou Mi's shoulder. 

"I think you'll be okay," Kyuhyun told him, grinning. "You'll do just fine."

 

*

 

Zhou Mi had both children in his lap, cuddled up against his chest and holding each others hands. Despite the lateness of the hour they were still cheerful and bright eyed. 

"What's that one, Baba?" Junwoo, their son asked, pointing upwards.

"That," Zhou Mi said, thinking quickly, "Is an elephant." He used a stick to sketch the outline of an elephant in the dirt next to him, and both kids looked fascinated as it took shape. "See?" He pointed the stick upwards, sketching the same animal in the stars. "See its long trunk?"

"I see it!" Jihee, their little girl, said as she clapped her hands. "Can I have an elephant?"

"Well… they don't exist here. But, maybe Uncle Zitao or Auntie Qian can build you a toy version if you ask them nicely." 

"Mi, what are you telling them?" Kyuhyun asked as he joined them, lowering himself to the ground next to him. Jihee left Zhou Mi's lap and crawled over. "What stories is he telling you, precious?" 

"What do you mean _stories_?" Zhou Mi said. "I'm educating them." 

"Hmmmm?"

"Baba told us stories about Earth," Junwoo piped up. 

"Oh really? What exactly?"

"Baba said that Earth sits on the back of four elephants, who stand on the back of a giant tortoise, flying through space. But what's a tortoise, Appa?" 

"Our stories are meant to be a secret between us," Zhou Mi said to Junwoo, hiding his smile in his hair. "I can't believe you'd tell on me like that." 

Eventually the kids tired, falling asleep almost simultaneously. 

"Let's have another," Kyuhyun said, almost absentmindedly as he stroked Jihee's hair. 

Zhou Mi now knew that his heart could contain more, that it would stretch all the way to the edges of the universe and still be able to grow further. "I'd like that." 

 

*

 

It wasn't all sunshine and happiness on Denuo. The crew didn't always get along. They fought and had disagreements, and frustrations arose because life on their new home wasn't easy. 

A few years after they'd been settled on Denuo, Ryeowook disappeared.

Over time he'd gradually distanced himself from the others, holeing himself up in his house and production hall in a kind of self-imposed exile. While most of the others also had their own homes by now, they still spent a lot of time at the main habitat. They still had the habit of group dinners a couple a nights a week, but Ryeowook stopped attending only months after they permanently settled on Denuo. 

One day Zhou Mi woke up, and realised he hadn't seen Ryeowook in a couple of weeks. He visited him occasionally, but the last visit hadn't been pleasant. Ryeowook had been in a particularly bad mood, and while he had tried to suppress it as Zhou Mi had taken Jihee with him, Zhou Mi left quickly as he seemed about to snap. He hadn't seen him since. 

When Zhou Mi knocked on Ryeowook's door, it opened slowly, having been left ajar. 

"Ryeowook?" Zhou Mi called, even though he already knew that he wouldn't be there. Ryeowook's house was simple - consisting of merely two rooms: a small bathroom and a larger studio style living space with a bed and small stove - and it was easy to see that the place was empty. Not only was Ryeowook not there, but the few personal possessions he'd owned had been cleared out. 

Zhou Mi looked around for a bit, hoping to find a note, or some clue as to where he had gone but finally he had to admit that Ryeowook had left. 

Wherever he went to, he never came back. 

 

*

 

Sometimes life gave second chances, even when it was undeserved. 

Sometimes the universe provided an opportunity for a fresh start, something that the crew of Invenio knew only too well. 

Every year, those who remained of the crew gathered together to celebrate their anniversary: the day that they were revived and their mission began.

The Denuo year was significantly shorter than the Earth year, with the planet having a speedy orbit, but the main habitat held a large clock and calendar that counted down the days on Earth. It was only tradition by this stage - something useless that they couldn't seem to let go of. Even though they now all worked to the timescale of their new home, there was something comforting about knowing how time had passed on Earth. 

The anniversary was a day of reflection, of celebration, of acknowledging how far they'd come and remembering the place they'd left behind. They remembered those who were once with them and no longer were: Jinri, Leeteuk, Ryeowook. 

The original 20 had now swelled to a population of 45, with more on the way. 

Life out on Denuo wasn't utopia, but it was the closest thing to it than any of them had experienced before. There was a lot more to be done until it was a proper colony and not a collection of space misfits. There was the rest of their planet to fully explore, as well as the rest of their solar system. They had grand plans of introducing insects and small animals to create a proper ecosystem, but that would take much more time to ensure they did it properly and didn't end up accidentally destroying the world they'd created. 

But while there was hard work, disagreements, and occasional longings for the home and people they'd left behind, there was also happiness, love, and potential. 

There was second chances. There was Denuo.


End file.
